What Should Have Happened in Harry Potter
by Redbayly
Summary: Ever wonder about how things would've gone if you applied real-world logic to the Harry Potter world? Let's just say, things would have definitely turned out different. This is a satire (as in not to be taken seriously). See introduction for details.
1. Introduction

What Should Have Happened in Harry Potter

An Introduction

Good day to you, Honorable Readers,

Or night, or morning, or whatever time it is where you currently are in this big, wide, wonderful world full of despair and woe that we live in…

Wait, that came out wrong. I'll start again.

My name is Redbayly (though that is a pseudonym adopted for my protection on the internet) and I am sure you are wondering what this story is and why you should consider reading it. It all started in another fandom, the Avatar: The Last Airbender fandom to be precise, when another writer by the name of daveshan posted a fic entitled "What SHOULD have Happened in AtLA." The fic itself was a catalogue of silly mistakes the writers, animators, and editors of the show in question had made and how those mistakes would have been received in a rational universe that understood the laws of both physics and common sense. The results were staggering and eye-opening.

Now, what does this have to do with our old friend Harry Potter, you may ask? Well, daveshan's work was so inspiring for me that I began to look at other fandoms I love and look for similar errors, only to find them in great quantities in my favorite fandom of all, the Harry Potter universe.

Typically, those of us who point out some of the things that will be included in this work are known as "bashers" as we find horrible plot-holes and grievous mistakes and bring them to light, thus spoiling the 'magic,' as it were, of the fandom. Do not worry, though, dear Readers; despite having all these things revealed to me, I am still perfectly capable of enjoying both series as they were intended to be taken and I am sure you will, too.

Onward to the matter at hand, I am sure you are still curious about what _exactly_ it is you are about to get yourself into. Like daveshan, I intend to rip away all the glamor and glitz and reveal to you exactly where the flow of logic stopped in the story and how things would have turned out if the characters simply used their brains or if the events had transpired in the real world.

If you are still afraid that your view of Harry Potter will forever be tarnished, I insist that you stop reading now and go find a nice, fluffy, canon-compliant fanfic to enjoy. If you are one of those people who have read my other major work, "He's Not Dead Yet," a giddy little parody of bashing-fics and the clichés they contain (though some people seem to take it seriously, for some reason), then I am delighted to have you on board for this.

Thank you all for your patronage. Reader discretion is advised. Now, sit back and, hopefully, enjoy What Should Have Happened in Harry Potter!


	2. Boy Who Lived

What Should Have Happened in Harry Potter

**Thank you all for continuing on this journey with me. I will now take up the story from the first chapter and continue onwards until the epilogue of Deathly Hallows.**

**I would like to make the point now of saying that I will completely follow the fanfiction guidelines. There will not be dialogue in-between the lines of a copied work, though the start of each section will be quoted straight from the book; well, until what SHOULD have happened comes into play.**

**I would also like to take this moment to state that I am **_**not**_** J. K. Rowling, though I greatly admire her and her achievements, and am making no money from this venture.**

The Boy Who Lived

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense.

Mr. Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills. He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large mustache. Mrs. Dursley was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbors.

Something which was fairly obvious and certain to exact a large degree of ire from said neighbors, driving them to retaliate by spying on the Dursleys in turn. It was this very thing that brought out the neighbors the following morning to discover that a one-year-old baby had been abandoned on the Dursleys' doorstep the night before, leading to the revelation that the child was the Dursleys' nephew. Because of the overwhelming amount of retaliation-spying done over the following years, Petunia and Vernon had to watch their step when it came to the boy so as not to arouse suspicion.

Because of the actions of a small group of curious people, Harry Potter grew up in a relatively normal environment and though he did think his relatives acted strangely he bore them no ill-will for their odd eccentricities.

* * *

When Mr. and Mrs. Dursley woke up on the dull, gray Tuesday our story starts, there was nothing about the cloudy sky outside to suggest that strange and mysterious things would soon be happening all over the country. Mr. Dursley hummed as he picked out his most boring tie for work, and Mrs. Dursley gossiped away happily as she wrestled a screaming Dudley into his high chair.

None of them noticed a large, tawny owl flutter past the window.

At half past eight, Mr. Dursley picked up his briefcase, pecked Mrs. Dursley on the cheek, and tried to kiss Dudley good-bye but missed, because Dudley was now having a tantrum and throwing his cereal at the walls.

"Little tyke," chortled Mr. Dursley as he began to leave the house, only to be stopped by his wife's indignant look.

"How is encouraging that kind of behavior in a child a good thing?" she said. "Honestly, it's as if we want our son to grow up to be a spoiled, rotten brat who gets whatever he wants as long as he screams loudly enough. What kind of parents would we be if we endorsed such a thing?"

"You're right, my dear," Vernon said in shock. "It would be completely irresponsible for us to treat Dudley's behavior as acceptable by any means. Dudley, no, that is completely unacceptable," he reprimanded the infant.

* * *

It was on the corner of the street that he noticed the first sign of something peculiar - a cat reading a map. For a second, Mr. Dursley didn't realize what he had seen - then he jerked his head around to look again. There was a tabby cat standing on the corner of Privet Drive, but there wasn't a map in sight. What could he have been thinking of? It must have been a trick of the light. Mr. Dursley blinked and stared at the cat. It stared back. As Mr. Dursley drove around the corner and up the road, he watched the cat in his mirror. It was now reading the sign that said Privet Drive - no, looking at the sign; cats couldn't read maps or signs. Mr. Dursley gave himself a little shake and put the cat out of his mind. As he drove toward town he thought of nothing except a large order of drills he was hoping to get that day.

But on the edge of town, drills were driven out of his mind by something else. As he sat in the usual morning traffic jam, he couldn't help noticing that there seemed to be a lot of strangely dressed people about. People in cloaks. Mr. Dursley couldn't bear people who dressed in funny clothes - the getups you saw on young people! He supposed this was some stupid new fashion.

Never mind the fact that he knew about his wife's sister's people, having met the Potters before and seeing the same sorts of getups worn by their lot, Vernon completely dismissed the whole thing as mere coincidence. No, this would certainly not give him any reason to worry, he thought and returned to contemplating drills.

* * *

Mr. Dursley always sat with his back to the window in his office on the ninth floor. If he hadn't, he might have found it harder to concentrate on drills that morning. He didn't see the owls swooping past in broad daylight, though people down in the street did; they pointed and gazed open-mouthed as owl after owl sped overhead. Most of them had never seen an owl even at nighttime. Mr. Dursley, however, had a perfectly normal, owl-free morning. He yelled at five different people. He made several important telephone calls and shouted a bit more. He was in a very good mood until lunchtime, when he thought he'd stretch his legs and walk across the road to buy himself a bun from the bakery.

This proved to be something of a mistake as it allowed a number of his disgruntled subordinates an opportunity to gather and plan.

"I am so sick of him and his attitude," said one employee.

"Me, too, he isn't even a senior partner and yet he treats all of us like lackeys and shouts for no reason," another added.

"I think it's time we keep an eye on ol' Vernon," said a third. "If he does something out of order, like, for example, take in his orphaned nephew and end up mistreating the boy, we'll be on him like hyenas on a wounded antelope."

"That's a bit convoluted, don't you think?" said the first subordinate. "I mean, what are the odds that something like that will happen?"

And so it turned out that Harry Potter grew up properly cared for, otherwise Vernon's attempts at mistreatment would be reported and he would end up sacked, imprisoned, or both all thanks to the efforts of a small group of individuals.

* * *

As he pulled into the driveway of number four, the first thing he saw - and it didn't improve his mood - was the tabby cat he'd spotted that morning. It was now sitting on his garden wall. He was sure it was the same one; it had the same markings around its eyes.

"Shoo!" said Mr. Dursley loudly.

The cat didn't move. It just gave him a stern look.

"Okay, I'm willing to write off when I thought I saw you reading a map this morning as the result of a lack of sleep considering I'm a working man with a one-year-old baby with a very demanding nature," he said. "But when you seem fully capable of understanding what I am saying and responding to it with a look of indignation that I am certain a normal cat would not do, I have no other option but to infer that you are somehow _not_ a normal cat and likely have something to do with those weird groups of people going on about something to do with a child named Harry Potter. If that is so, I must ask you to leave my property at once as my family and I want absolutely nothing to do with your crowd and I will thank you to leave respectable, normal people in peace." With that said, he turned and walked into his house, leaving an astonished Animagus staring in disbelief after him.

* * *

Mrs. Dursley had had a nice, normal day. She told him over dinner all about Mrs. Next Door's problems with her daughter and how Dudley had learned a new word ("Won't!"). Mr. Dursley tried to act normally. When Dudley had been put to bed, he went into the living room in time to catch the last report on the evening news:

"And finally, bird-watchers everywhere have reported that the nation's owls have been behaving very unusually today. Although owls normally hunt at night and are hardly ever seen in daylight, there have been hundreds of sightings of these birds flying in every direction since sunrise. Experts are unable to explain why the owls have suddenly changed their sleeping pattern." The newscaster allowed himself a grin. "Most mysterious. And now, over to Jim McGuffin with the weather. Going to be any more showers of owls tonight, Jim?"

"Well, Ted," said the weatherman, "I don't know about that, but it's not only the owls that have been acting oddly today. Viewers as far apart as Kent, Yorkshire, and Dundee have been phoning in to tell me that instead of the rain I promised yesterday, they've had a downpour of shooting stars! Perhaps people have been celebrating Bonfire Night early - it's not until next week, folks! But I can promise a wet night tonight.

"Meaning that, if you were to, oh I don't know, leave a baby in a basket on the doorstep of a house, it would be incredibly stupid and careless as the child could probably catch pneumonia and would likely die of a combination of both sickness and exposure to the elements."

"Oh, come on, Jim," said Ted. "There's no way anyone would be that stupid or careless. I mean, really, who would be either that stupid or that negligent to abandon a baby on a doorstep in the first place? Let alone doing it in November when there is a high likelihood of rain and cold."

* * *

Albus Dumbledore didn't seem to realize that he had just arrived in a street where everything from his name to his boots was unwelcome. He was busy rummaging in his cloak, looking for something. But he did seem to realize he was being watched, because he looked up suddenly at the cat, which was still staring at him from the other end of the street. For some reason, the sight of the cat seemed to amuse him. He chuckled and muttered, "I should have known."

He found what he was looking for in his inside pocket. It seemed to be a silver cigarette lighter. He flicked it open, held it up in the air, and clicked it. The nearest street lamp went out with a little pop. He clicked it again - the next lamp flickered into darkness. Twelve times he clicked the Put-Outer, until the only lights left on the whole street were two tiny pinpricks in the distance, which were the eyes of the cat watching him. If anyone looked out of their window now, even beady-eyed Mrs. Dursley, they wouldn't be able to see anything that was happening down on the pavement. Dumbledore slipped the Put-Outer back inside his cloak and set off down the street toward number four, where he sat down on the wall next to the cat. He didn't look at it, but after a moment he spoke to it.

"Fancy seeing you here, Professor McGonagall."

He turned to smile at the tabby, but it had gone. Instead he was smiling at a rather severe-looking woman who was wearing square glasses exactly the shape of the markings the cat had had around its eyes. She, too, was wearing a cloak, an emerald one. Her black hair was drawn into a tight bun. She looked distinctly ruffled.

"How did you know it was me?" she asked.

"My dear Professor, considering the fact that I was, at one point, your Transfiguration teacher and mentor, I was clearly the one who set you on the path to becoming an Animagus. Moreover, the fact that I am Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, don't you think I would know the names of every registered Animagus on the Ministry's register? Furthermore, as your employer, I have seen what you look like in your Animagus form as it would be incredibly negligent of me not to know of any special abilities that those in my employ possess.

"But, to conclude, I've never seen a cat sit so stiffly."

McGonagall opened and closed her mouth a couple of times before nodding.

"Yes, well, those are fairly obvious reasons and it was rather foolish of me to be surprised about your ability to distinguish me in my Animagus form," she admitted. "But, as to the matter at hand, where is Harry Potter?"

* * *

**And now for the first repeat scene…**

* * *

He turned to smile at the tabby, but it had gone. Instead he was smiling at a rather severe-looking woman who was wearing square glasses exactly the shape of the markings the cat had had around its eyes. She, too, was wearing a cloak, an emerald one. Her black hair was drawn into a tight bun. She looked distinctly ruffled.

"How did you know it was me?" she asked.

"My dear Professor, I've never seen a cat sit so stiffly."

"You'd be stiff if you'd been sitting on a brick wall all day," said Professor McGonagall.

"All day? When you could have been celebrating? I must have passed a dozen feasts and parties on my way here."

Professor McGonagall sniffed angrily.

"Oh yes, I've celebrating, all right," she said impatiently. "Considering the fact that two of my former students have been viciously murdered and their son left an orphan from what I have heard, it's only natural that I should be dancing in the streets like a callous buffoon. Honestly, it's like there is no sense of reverence for the dead."

"Yes…well…we have much to be thankful for, despite the tragic loss of life for James and Lily Potter," Dumbledore replied. "We've had precious little to celebrate for eleven years."

"Exactly my point," McGonagall hissed. "Eleven years! Eleven years of innocent families being slaughtered just like the Potters and the Ministry has done nothing more than throw arrests around without even bothering to actually take a serious stance to cut off support to the Death Eaters that have gotten away." She threw up her hands in exasperation. "I mean, really, do any of these people have a right to celebrate when there are so many things that have to be repaired to ensure this never happens again? Is there even going to be a commemoration for the fallen? How about coming out of their drunken stupors long enough to realize that You-Know-Who's supporters are still very much alive and could attack as a retaliation for the demise of their leader? No, Albus, I don't think we have any reason to be celebrating now at such a critical point in time."

Albus Dumbledore simply opened and closed his mouth a few times before plastering a friendly smile on his face.

"Would you care for a sherbet lemon?" he said, holding out a small bag.

McGonagall simply slapped her forehead.

* * *

Professor McGonagall shot a sharp look at Dumbledore and said "The owls are nothing next to the rumors that are flying around. You know what they're saying? About why he's disappeared? About what finally stopped him?"

It seemed that Professor McGonagall had reached the point she was most anxious to discuss, the real reason she had been waiting on a cold, hard wall all day, for neither as a cat nor as a woman had she fixed Dumbledore with such a piercing stare as she did now. It was plain that whatever "everyone" was saying, she was not going to believe it until Dumbledore told her it was true. Dumbledore, however, was choosing another sherbet lemon and did not answer.

"What they're saying," she pressed on, "is that last night Voldemort turned up in Godric's Hollow. He went to find the Potters. The rumor is that Lily and James Potter are - are - that they're - dead."

Dumbledore bowed his head. Professor McGonagall gasped.

"Lily and James... I can't believe it... I didn't want to believe it... Oh, Albus..."

Dumbledore reached out and patted her on the shoulder. "I know... I know... " he said heavily.

Professor McGonagall's voice trembled as she went on. "That's not all. They're saying he tried to kill the Potter's son, Harry. But he couldn't. He couldn't kill that little boy. No one knows why, or how, but they're saying that when he couldn't kill Harry Potter, Voldemort's power somehow broke - and that's why he's gone."

Dumbledore nodded glumly.

"It's - it's true ?" faltered Professor McGonagall. "After all he's done... all the people he's killed... he couldn't kill a little boy? It's just astounding... of all the things to stop him... but how in the name of heaven did Harry survive?"

"We can only guess," said Dumbledore. "We may never know."

"Which means that you have a fairly good idea but you're not going to tell me," McGonagall retorted with a sharp huff as she dried her eyes.

"I beg your pardon, Minerva?"

"Every time I've tried to bring up the subject of You-Know-Who…alright, _Voldemort_, you have skirted the issue and interrupted me with some random statement about sherbet lemons or earmuffs. **[I'm not kidding, go back and re-read the chapter for yourself]** Honestly, Albus, it's like you don't want anyone other than yourself to know about the details surrounding his defeat, even though such information could be useful and possibly help dampen the fame surrounding young Harry. Really, Albus, it's almost like you want everyone to think that Harry is one hundred percent responsible for Voldemort's downfall so that you have an excuse to keep him away from the wizarding world."

Dumbledore's eyes shifted quickly from side to side. _$#*!_ _She's on to me!_

* * *

Professor McGonagall pulled out a lace handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes beneath her spectacles. Dumbledore gave a great sniff as he took a golden watch from his pocket and examined it. It was a very odd watch. It had twelve hands but no numbers; instead, little planets were moving around the edge. It must have made sense to Dumbledore, though, because he put it back in his pocket and said, "Hagrid's late. I suppose it was he who told you I'd be here, by the way?"

"Yes," said Professor McGonagall. "And I don't suppose you're going to tell me why you're here, of all places?"

"I've come to bring Harry to his aunt and uncle. They're the only family he has left now."

"You don't mean - you can't mean the people who live here ?" cried Professor McGonagall, jumping to her feet and pointing at number four. "Dumbledore - you can't. I've been watching them all day. You couldn't find two people who are less like us. And they've got this son - I saw him kicking his mother all the way up the street, screaming for sweets. Harry Potter come and live here!"

"It's the best place for him," said Dumbledore firmly. "His aunt and uncle will be able to explain everything to him when he's older. I've written them a letter."

"A letter?" repeated Professor McGonagall faintly, sitting back down on the wall. "Really, Dumbledore, you think you can explain all this in a letter? These people will never understand him! He'll be famous - a legend - I wouldn't be surprised if today was known as Harry Potter day in the future - there will be books written about Harry - every child in our world will know his name!"

"Exactly." said Dumbledore, looking very seriously over the top of his half-moon glasses. "It would be enough to turn any boy's head. Famous before he can walk and talk! Famous for something he won't even remember! Can you see how much better off he'll be, growing up away from all that until he's ready to take it?"

"I can understand the need to keep him away from fame so he doesn't get a swelled head like James," McGonagall retorted sharply. "But I honestly do not see the sense in leaving him with his relatives. Relatives who, I might add, despise our very existence. Don't think I don't know how they see us, Albus!" She jabbed an accusing finger at the aged headmaster. "I heard on numerous occasions how Lily's sister outright rejected her. Even at school, the poor girl dreaded going home because her sister constantly belittled her for being a witch.

"And, really, _a letter_? Would it kill you to knock on the door and see if they are actually willing to take in the child? Yes, they might be disgruntled about being woken up in the middle of the night, but wouldn't it be better to make sure Harry gets in safely and is accepted and that the Dursleys understand they are not to mistreat him? Or you could even wait to do it in the morning when they will be much more rational and capable of making a decision.

"Honestly, Albus, an outside observer might think you want Harry to grow up downtrodden and unloved so that, when he finally does come back to the wizarding world, he'll see it as his salvation and only means of escape."

Dumbledore grit his teeth as his eyes shifted from side to side. _$#*!_ _She's on to me!_

* * *

A low rumbling sound had broken the silence around them. It grew steadily louder as they looked up and down the street for some sign of a headlight; it swelled to a roar as they both looked up at the sky - and a huge motorcycle fell out of the air and landed on the road in front of them.

If the motorcycle was huge, it was nothing to the man sitting astride it. He was almost twice as tall as a normal man and at least five times as wide. He looked simply too big to be allowed, and so wild - long tangles of bushy black hair and beard hid most of his face, he had hands the size of trash can lids, and his feet in their leather boots were like baby dolphins. In his vast, muscular arms he was holding a bundle of blankets.

"Hagrid," said Dumbledore, sounding relieved. "At last. And where did you get that motorcycle?"

"Borrowed it, Professor Dumbledore, sir," said the giant, climbing carefully off the motorcycle as he spoke. "Young Sirius Black lent it to me. I've got him, sir."

"No problems, were there?"

"No, sir - house was almost destroyed, but I got him out all right before the Muggles started swarmin' around. He fell asleep as we was flyin' over Bristol."

"Excuse me, Albus, Hagrid," said McGonagall with a confused expression. "But there is something here that doesn't make sense."

"What's wrong, Minerva?" said Dumbledore.

"It's just that…correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the murders take place on Halloween night?"

"Yes," Hagrid said tearfully, "and a tragic thing it was."

"Yes, yes, I agree with you on that, but…how soon did you get to the house, Hagrid?"

"I got there minutes after it happened and pulled poor little Harry from the rubble."

"And that's when you met Sirius Black and got the motorcycle?"

"Yeah, he let me borrow it after I refused to hand Harry over because Dumbledore told me to bring Harry straight here."

"Yes and, ignoring the tremendous oversight of both the dangers of taking an infant for a ride on a motorbike and the fact that you are not allowed to do magic, the latter of which would have been important if any of You-Know-Who's supporters had turned up and attacked, how is it that it took you around twelve hours to get here?"

Both men stared at her.

"What? It's a fair question. The Potters lived in Godric's Hollow which is in the West Country, right?" They both nodded. "And we are currently in Little Whinging, which is in Surrey, correct?" Again, they both nodded and she threw her hands up in the air. "Then how is it that it took you twelve hours to get here on a motorbike that can _fly_? I mean, you wouldn't have to deal with any traffic and, though both places are fairly distant from one another, it shouldn't have taken this long to get here. So, Hagrid, what happened?"

Hagrid rubbed the back of his head sheepishly.

"Um…you know how everyone knows about what happened with the Potters and You-Know-Who?" The other two nodded. "I may or may not have stopped for a pick-me-up and got wrangled into telling people about it. Several times."

Both professors groaned and pinched the bridges of their noses in exasperation.

* * *

**Sorry 'bout that. I love Hagrid as much as anyone, but that is really the only explanation I have for the weird time lapse. I checked out maps of England and saw that Surrey and the West Country are not 12 hours away from each other, especially not if you fly. It didn't take me anywhere near that long to get from D.C. to Arkansas to visit my grandmother, and I think planes probably go about the same speed as a flying motorcycle, if not slower.**

* * *

Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall bent forward over the bundle of blankets. Inside, just visible, was a baby boy, fast asleep. Under a tuft of jet-black hair over his forehead they could see a curiously shaped cut, like a bolt of lightning.

"Is that where - ?" whispered Professor McGonagall.

"Yes," said Dumbledore. "He'll have that scar forever."

"Couldn't you do something about it, Dumbledore?"

"Even if I could, I wouldn't. Scars can come in handy. I have one myself above my left knee that is a perfect map of the London Underground. Well - give him here, Hagrid - we'd better get this over with."

Dumbledore took Harry in his arms and turned toward the Dursleys' house. Only for McGonagall to suddenly slap him on the wrist and snatch the child from his hands.

"What is the meaning of this, Minerva?" Dumbledore demanded.

"What the F *&# is _wrong_ with you?!" she snapped. "You're going to leave a one-year-old child, who has not received any medical attention despite having likely been exposed to the Killing Curse and likely suffered some severe trauma, on a doorstep in November when there is a high likelihood of rain? People are _not_ this negligent anymore, Albus; and, if they were, they would be arrested for child endangerment.

"I mean, what if he catches cold? I don't recall hearing you mention anything about Warming Charms on his blanket. And what if he wakes up and wanders off? Then what will happen? It is also completely irresponsible of you to just walk away without being absolutely certain that the Dursleys don't just drop him at an orphanage or something as soon as they find him."

"But…the letter-"

"Oh, sod the letter! Do you really expect them to just take your word for it that it is in their best interests to take in the child of two people they haven't spoken to in years when you don't even have the balls to come and tell them in person?! Albus, there's a difference between being a brilliant eccentric and just being plain stupid!"

Dumbledore's shoulders slumped and his eyes went wide.

"My God," he muttered. "You're right, Minerva. That was completely careless and stupid of me. I have no idea what I was thinking." He shook himself and turned serious. "You're right. Let's get Harry to Madam Pomfrey and make sure he's all right and tomorrow I shall return with him to see if the Dursleys are willing to take him in. After all, it would also be incredibly rude and unforgiveable to just dump a child with a family without asking for their consent. Thank you for helping me see reason, Minerva."

"It's no problem, Albus," she replied with a short huff. "It's my obligation as your Deputy-Headmistress to make sure you don't make dumb-a$$ decisions."

* * *

"Well," said Dumbledore finally, "that's that. We've no business staying here. We may as well go and join the celebrations."

"Yeah," said Hagrid in a very muffled voice, "I'll be takin' Sirius his bike back. G'night, Professor McGonagall - Professor Dumbledore, sir."

Wiping his streaming eyes on his jacket sleeve, Hagrid swung himself onto the motorcycle and kicked the engine into life; with a roar it rose into the air and off into the night.

"I shall see you soon, I expect, Professor McGonagall," said Dumbledore, nodding to her.

"You do plan to check in on Harry regularly, right?" she replied seriously. "After all, it would be a horrendous oversight not to either make sure he's not being mistreated, or at the very least have someone check in for you."

"Of course, Minerva," Dumbledore said as though he was shocked she would even suggest such a thing. "I am not so old and senile that I would not come by at least once a month or have you or one of the other teachers or Order members stop by to ensure Harry's safety and to remind the Dursleys to treat him with at least some amount of kindness. Honestly, Minerva, if I didn't do that I would be either incredibly stupid or a complete and utter bastard."

* * *

**Author's Note: If you have any suggestions for how things could've and should've gone or any plot-holes in the story, please let me know so that I will be certain to include them. How did you all like my badass McGonagall? When you think about it, she really wasn't all that helpful in the original story. I decided to throw the Dumbledore-lovers a bone and have Dumbledore actually show some common sense at the end.**

**Well, thanks for reading, see you next time on What SHOULD Have Happened in Harry Potter.**


	3. The Vanishing Glass

What Should Have Happened in Harry Potter

**I've actually got a couple chapters written out but I plan to release them at a decent pace, depending on my workload. I'm currently working on the Diagon Alley chapter, but I'm stuck on how to re-analyze the meeting with Draco. If you have any suggestions, please let me know.**

**I do not own Harry Potter.**

The Vanishing Glass

Nearly ten years had passed since the Dursleys had woken up to find their nephew on the front step, but Privet Drive had hardly changed at all. The sun rose on the same tidy front gardens and lit up the brass number four on the Dursleys' front door; it crept into their living room, which was almost exactly the same as it had been on the night when Mr. Dursley had seen that fateful news report about the owls. Only the photographs on the mantelpiece really showed how much time had passed. Ten years ago, there had been lots of pictures of what looked like a large pink beach ball wearing different-colored bonnets - but Dudley Dursley was no longer a baby, and now the photographs showed a large blond boy riding his first bicycle, on a carousel at the fair, playing a computer game with his father, being hugged and kissed by his mother. The room held no sign at all that another boy lived in the house, too.

Which was apt as there _was_ no second boy living there. When the Dursleys had discovered their nephew on the doorstep, their first inclination was to send him to an orphanage or report this to Children's Services; however, Dumbledore's letter made it clear that, if Harry didn't live with them, bad people could come and kill them all.

After several years of brow-beating, bullying, and practically abusing the poor boy, the neighbors and school teachers finally realized something was up and had the boy removed from the household and placed in the custody of Children's Services where Harry was placed with a very kind and loving set of foster-parents. Vernon managed to save his job only because he gave the child up without a fight (not like he actually wanted the brat in the first place), but he and his family would never be looked at quite the same ever again.

* * *

Perhaps it had something to do with living in a dark cupboard, but Harry had always been small and skinny for his age. He looked even smaller and skinnier than he really was because all he had to wear were old clothes of Dudley's, and Dudley was about four times bigger than he was. Harry had a thin face, knobbly knees, black hair, and bright green eyes. He wore round glasses held together with a lot of Scotch tape because of all the times Dudley had punched him on the nose. The only thing Harry liked about his own appearance was a very thin scar on his forehead that was shaped like a bolt of lightning. He had had it as long as he could remember, and the first question he could ever remember asking his Aunt Petunia was how he had gotten it.

"In the car crash when your parents died," she had said. "And don't ask questions."

"Okay, I guess I'll just take your word for it," little Harry replied. "I mean, considering the fact that you don't like me, clearly don't like my parents, and have no reason to be truthful to me, I am going to believe you one hundred percent."

* * *

Don't ask questions - that was the first rule for a quiet life with the Dursleys.

Never mind the fact that children ask questions in order to learn. The fact that Harry was not allowed to ask questions at home drove him to ask many, many questions of his teachers; something which caused a bit of confusion at school. The fact that Harry asked so many questions and clearly understood the responses was a far cry from his normally mediocre grades which were always just less than his cousin's; not enough to outshine the larger boy, but not as bad as to make Harry out to be stupid.

The teachers, noticing this discrepancy, were led to investigate why a boy with such an inquisitive nature and clearly bright mind wouldn't be doing better in school. They kept a close eye on Harry and realized that he was being consistently bullied by his cousin, which promptly led to an inquiry about the trouble in the Dursley household, resulting in Mr. and Mrs. Dursley being put on a watch-list and their son being placed on probation.

After that, the teachers, being dedicated to the education of their student, encouraged Harry to put more effort into his work and not to hold back because of what his relatives might say.

"Honestly," said one teacher to her colleagues, "it's like whoever placed the Potter boy with his relatives had intended for his intellect to be stifled and for his curiosity to get directed away from academia to suit that person's own agenda."

Meanwhile, miles and miles away, Albus Dumbledore dropped the papers on his desk and began to sweat nervously. _S#*! It feels like someone's on to me!_

* * *

Uncle Vernon entered the kitchen as Harry was turning over the bacon.

"Comb your hair!" he barked, by way of a morning greeting.

About once a week, Uncle Vernon looked over the top of his newspaper and shouted that Harry needed a haircut. Harry must have had more haircuts than the rest of the boys in his class put together, but it made no difference, his hair simply grew that way - all over the place.

Harry was frying eggs by the time Dudley arrived in the kitchen with his mother. Despite the fact that an eleven-year-old should not be allowed to deal with cooking unless under the supervision of an adult in case of an accident. Not to say that it is impossible for an eleven-year-old to know how to cook basic things like eggs, it is an act of extreme negligence on the part of the adults not to ensure that the child is not doing more work than he or she is capable of.

* * *

Dudley looked a lot like Uncle Vernon. He had a large pink face, not much neck, small, watery blue eyes, and thick blond hair that lay smoothly on his thick, fat head. Aunt Petunia often said that Dudley looked like a baby angel - Harry often said that Dudley looked like a pig in a wig.

Harry put the plates of egg and bacon on the table, which was difficult as there wasn't much room. Dudley, meanwhile, was counting his presents. His face fell.

"Thirty-six," he said, looking up at his mother and father. "That's two less than last year."

"Darling, you haven't counted Auntie Marge's present, see, it's here under this big one from Mummy and Daddy."

"All right, thirty-seven then," said Dudley, going red in the face. Harry, who could see a huge Dudley tantrum coming on, began wolfing down his bacon as fast as possible in case Dudley turned the table over.

Aunt Petunia obviously scented danger, too, because she said quickly, "And we'll buy you another two presents while we're out today. How's that, popkin? Two more presents. Is that all right?"

Dudley thought for a moment. It looked like hard work. Finally he said slowly, "So I'll have thirty... thirty..."

"Thirty-nine, sweetums," said Aunt Petunia.

"Oh." Dudley sat down heavily and grabbed the nearest parcel. "All right then."

Uncle Vernon chuckled.

"Little tyke wants his money's worth, just like his father. 'Atta boy, Dudley!" He ruffled Dudley's hair.

Harry stared on at the scene in both disgust and curiosity. He was disgusted by the way his aunt and uncle spoiled their son, but he also wondered where on earth they got the money to do so. Sure, Vernon may have a fairly decent-paying job at Grunnings, but, really, how could they afford to spoil their son to such a degree and still have enough money to spend on themselves even while leaving Harry with nothing but his cousin's old cast-offs for clothes and much less than a fair share of food.

_It almost makes me wonder if someone had had the forethought to leave a stipend to my caregivers that the Dursleys have embezzled while spending none of it on me_, Harry thought. _Nah, there's no way my parents would have done that for me if they were anything like how the Dursleys describe them._

* * *

At that moment the telephone rang and Aunt Petunia went to answer it while Harry and Uncle Vernon watched Dudley unwrap the racing bike, a video camera, a remote control airplane, sixteen new computer games, and a VCR. He was ripping the paper off a gold wristwatch when Aunt Petunia came back from the telephone looking both angry and worried.

"Bad news, Vernon," she said. "Mrs. Figg's broken her leg. She can't take him." She jerked her head in Harry's direction.

Dudley's mouth fell open in horror, but Harry's heart gave a leap. Every year on Dudley's birthday, his parents took him and a friend out for the day, to adventure parks, hamburger restaurants, or the movies. Every year, Harry was left behind with Mrs. Figg, a mad old lady who lived two streets away. Harry hated it there. The whole house smelled of cabbage and Mrs. Figg made him look at photographs of all the cats she'd ever owned.

"Now what?" said Aunt Petunia, looking furiously at Harry as though he'd planned this. Harry knew he ought to feel sorry that Mrs. Figg had broken her leg, but it wasn't easy when he reminded himself it would be a whole year before he had to look at Tibbles, Snowy, Mr. Paws, and Tufty again.

"We could phone Marge," Uncle Vernon suggested.

"Don't be silly, Vernon, she hates the boy."

The Dursleys often spoke about Harry like this, as though he wasn't there - or rather, as though he was something very nasty that couldn't understand them, like a slug.

"What about what's-her-name, your friend - Yvonne?"

"On vacation in Majorca," snapped Aunt Petunia.

"You could just leave me here," Harry put in hopefully (he'd be able to watch what he wanted on television for a change and maybe even have a go on Dudley's computer).

Aunt Petunia looked as though she'd just swallowed a lemon.

"And come back and find the house in ruins?" she snarled.

"Or, you could just let me out of the house and lock it when you leave," Harry explained, loudly so that they could hear him. "I could find something else to do like going to the library or the park and come back at whatever time you arrange to return."

Vernon and Petunia both exchanged a look.

"Actually, that is a fairly simple solution that would make everyone happy," said Vernon. "I never thought I'd admit this, but…good work, boy."

* * *

Half an hour later, Harry, who couldn't believe his luck, was sitting in the back of the Dursleys' car with Piers and Dudley, on the way to the zoo for the first time in his life. His aunt and uncle hadn't been able to think of anything else to do with him, but before they'd left, Uncle Vernon had taken Harry aside.

"I'm warning you," he had said, putting his large purple face right up close to Harry's, "I'm warning you now, boy - any funny business, anything at all - and you'll be in that cupboard from now until Christmas."

"I'm not going to-" Harry started but stopped short. "But…wouldn't people notice my absence, then?"

"What?!"

"Well, I mean, it's still the school year, isn't it? Wouldn't the teachers notice if I was missing from class every day?"

"Ha! You think I'm worried about that? Your teachers all think you're a troublemaker. We'll just say you've been cutting class."

"But wouldn't you be held accountable for not ensuring I get to school? I mean, if you're so well-respected in our neighborhood, wouldn't it seem odd that you're unable to make sure your wayward nephew stays in school. Come to think of it, how come no one thinks it's strange that you've brought up a troublemaker if you're so normal? And, if you are able to raise one delinquent, what does that say about Dudley?"

Vernon stared at the boy for a few minutes, his face turning purple. Slowly, the color drained from his face.

"You know what, boy, that's something I never thought of," he said, paling rapidly. "If you have such a reputation as a delinquent, it's horrible for the reputation of my family. Oh, God, what have I done?!" Vernon finally realized that all those years of spreading lies about his nephew would have a horrible impact on his family's standing in the community. No wonder he and Petunia never got invited to parties anymore.

* * *

The problem was, strange things often happened around Harry and it was just no good telling the Dursleys he didn't make them happen.

Once, Aunt Petunia, tired of Harry coming back from the barbers looking as though he hadn't been at all, had taken a pair of kitchen scissors and cut his hair so short he was almost bald except for his bangs, which she left "to hide that horrible scar." Dudley had laughed himself silly at Harry, who spent a sleepless night imagining school the next day, where he was already laughed at for his baggy clothes and taped glasses. Next morning, however, he had gotten up to find his hair exactly as it had been before Aunt Petunia had sheared it off. He had been given a week in his cupboard for this, even though he had tried to explain that he couldn't explain how it had grown back so quickly.

Another time, Aunt Petunia had been trying to force him into a revolting old sweater of Dudley's (brown with orange puff balls). The harder she tried to pull it over his head, the smaller it seemed to become, until finally it might have fitted a hand puppet, but certainly wouldn't fit Harry. Aunt Petunia had decided it must have shrunk in the wash and, to his great relief, Harry wasn't punished.

On the other hand, he'd gotten into terrible trouble for being found on the roof of the school kitchens. Dudley's gang had been chasing him as usual when, as much to Harry's surprise as anyone else's, there he was sitting on the chimney. Something which was investigated by the school as there are teachers who are supposed to monitor the grounds during recess who had witnessed Dudley and his gang chasing after the much smaller boy, obviously intent on harming him. The teachers had apprehended the bullies and sentenced them to detention as it was very clear what they had been attempting to do and you would have to be incredibly blind or just an outright jerk to not intervene when a group of much bigger and stronger boys is attempting to harm another, smaller student in your care.

* * *

While he drove, Uncle Vernon complained to Aunt Petunia. He liked to complain about things: people at work, Harry, the council, Harry, the bank, and Harry were just a few of his favorite subjects. This morning, it was motorcycles.

"... roaring along like maniacs, the young hoodlums," he said, as a motorcycle overtook them.

"I had a dream about a motorcycle," said Harry, remembering suddenly. "It was flying."

Uncle Vernon nearly crashed into the car in front. He turned right around in his seat and yelled at Harry, his face like a gigantic beet with a mustache: "MOTORCYCLES DON'T FLY!"

Dudley and Piers sniggered.

"I know they don't," said Harry. "It was only a dream."

But he wished he hadn't said anything. If there was one thing the Dursleys hated even more than his asking questions, it was his talking about anything acting in a way it shouldn't, no matter if it was in a dream or even a cartoon - they seemed to think he might get dangerous ideas.

Which is exactly why Harry was mentally berating himself for forgetting that incredibly crucial piece of information. After all, Harry would've had to be either suicidal or incredibly stupid not to hold his tongue when thoughts like that arose. You'd think after almost ten years of living with the Dursleys and having such a lesson repeatedly drilled into his mind would've taught Harry that.

* * *

After lunch they went to the reptile house. It was cool and dark in there, with lit windows all along the walls. Behind the glass, all sorts of lizards and snakes were crawling and slithering over bits of wood and stone. Dudley and Piers wanted to see huge, poisonous cobras and thick, man-crushing pythons. Dudley quickly found the largest snake in the place. It could have wrapped its body twice around Uncle Vernon's car and crushed it into a trash can - but at the moment it didn't look in the mood. In fact, it was fast asleep.

Dudley stood with his nose pressed against the glass, staring at the glistening brown coils.

"Make it move," he whined at his father. Uncle Vernon tapped on the glass, but the snake didn't budge.

"Do it again," Dudley ordered. Uncle Vernon rapped the glass smartly with his knuckles, but the snake just snoozed on.

"This is boring," Dudley moaned. He shuffled away.

Harry moved in front of the tank and looked intently at the snake. He wouldn't have been surprised if it had died of boredom itself - no company except stupid people drumming their fingers on the glass trying to disturb it all day long. It was worse than having a cupboard as a bedroom, where the only visitor was Aunt Petunia hammering on the door to wake you up; at least he got to visit the rest of the house.

The snake suddenly opened its beady eyes. Slowly, very slowly, it raised its head until its eyes were on a level with Harry's.

It winked.

Harry stared. Then he looked quickly around to see if anyone was watching. They weren't. He looked back at the snake and winked, too.

That's when something occurred to Harry. Snakes. Can't. Wink. Harry might not be a particularly well-read individual, despite the fact that the library would've been the ideal place to hide from Dudley as the lout hated books; but Harry had read a book about reptiles and was well-aware of the fact that snakes do not possess eyelids.

Giving himself a little shake, Harry slowly backed away from the cage.

* * *

**Think that could've gone another way? Very well, then.**

* * *

After lunch they went to the reptile house. It was cool and dark in there, with lit windows all along the walls. Behind the glass, all sorts of lizards and snakes were crawling and slithering over bits of wood and stone. Dudley and Piers wanted to see huge, poisonous cobras and thick, man-crushing pythons. Dudley quickly found the largest snake in the place. It could have wrapped its body twice around Uncle Vernon's car and crushed it into a trash can - but at the moment it didn't look in the mood. In fact, it was fast asleep.

Dudley stood with his nose pressed against the glass, staring at the glistening brown coils.

"Make it move," he whined at his father. Uncle Vernon tapped on the glass, but the snake didn't budge.

"Do it again," Dudley ordered. Uncle Vernon rapped the glass smartly with his knuckles, but the snake just snoozed on.

"This is boring," Dudley moaned. He shuffled away.

Harry moved in front of the tank and looked intently at the snake. He wouldn't have been surprised if it had died of boredom itself - no company except stupid people drumming their fingers on the glass trying to disturb it all day long. It was worse than having a cupboard as a bedroom, where the only visitor was Aunt Petunia hammering on the door to wake you up; at least he got to visit the rest of the house.

The snake suddenly opened its beady eyes. Slowly, very slowly, it raised its head until its eyes were on a level with Harry's.

It winked.

Harry stared. Then he looked quickly around to see if anyone was watching. They weren't. He looked back at the snake and winked, too.

The snake jerked its head toward Uncle Vernon and Dudley, then raised its eyes to the ceiling. It gave Harry a look that said quite plainly:

"I get that all the time."

"I know," Harry murmured through the glass, though he wasn't sure the snake could hear him. "It must be really annoying."

The snake nodded vigorously.

"Where do you come from, anyway?" Harry asked.

The snake jabbed its tail at a little sign next to the glass. Harry peered at it.

Boa Constrictor, Brazil.

"Okay, granted that this is disturbing and goes against any form of common sense as communication with animals has never been proven as more than a concept of fiction, how is it that you are able to understand English? I mean, I am speaking to you in what, as far as I can tell, is English and I doubt that animals communicate in actual words as it seems they convey more their intent based on whatever noise they make, it is completely illogical for you to actually understand what I am saying in terms of normal English."

The snake simply gave him a curious look before giving its best imitation of a shrug.

"Your guess is as good as mine, amigo," the serpent hissed from behind the class. "But, really, there are so many things in this universe I don't understand. For instance, why you aren't running around and panicking that you are able to talk to snakes, something which you have already asserted to be impossible. Nor why you are moving to avoid being hit by those oncoming humans_._"

"I wha- oof!" Caught by surprise, Harry fell hard on the concrete floor as Piers punched him in the ribs. What came next happened so fast no one saw how it happened - one second, Piers and Dudley were leaning right up close to the glass, the next, they had leapt back with howls of horror.

* * *

Harry sat up and gasped; the glass front of the boa constrictor's tank had vanished. The great snake was uncoiling itself rapidly, slithering out onto the floor. People throughout the reptile house screamed and started running for the exits.

As the snake slid swiftly past him, Harry could have sworn a low, hissing voice said, "Brazil, here I come... Thanksss, amigo."

The keeper of the reptile house was in shock.

"But the glass," he kept saying, "where did the glass go?"

"What I'd like to know," Petunia said through gritted teeth, "Is where your security staff was when this happened."

"I…um…"

"I mean, if your staff were doing their jobs and making sure that those boys weren't rough-housing, none of this would've happened."

"What does that have to do with the glass disappearing?"

Petunia held back saying that the boy, Harry, was one of those freaks who could do magic and that, if provoked, could cause things to happen. Really, if the security people had been paying attention and saw Piers knocking the boy down, something which any responsible adult would put a stop to, none of this would have happened. However, Petunia wasn't about to reveal something like that, nor admit that her son's friend was wrong for punching the Potter boy in the ribs, so she decided that the blame for this would rest solely upon Harry's shoulders.

* * *

Uncle Vernon waited until Piers was safely out of the house before starting on Harry. He was so angry he could hardly speak. He managed to say, "Go - cupboard - stay - no meals," before he collapsed into a chair and Aunt Petunia had to run and get him a large brandy.

Harry lay in his dark cupboard much later, wishing he had a watch. He didn't know what time it was and he couldn't be sure the Dursleys were asleep yet. Until they were, he couldn't risk sneaking to the kitchen for some food.

He'd lived with the Dursleys almost ten years, ten miserable years, as long as he could remember, ever since he'd been a baby and his parents had died in that car crash. He couldn't remember being in the car when his parents had died. Sometimes, when he strained his memory during long hours in his cupboard, he came up with a strange vision: a blinding flash of green light and a burning pain on his forehead. This, he supposed, was the crash, though he couldn't imagine where all the green light came from. He couldn't remember his parents at all. His aunt and uncle never spoke about them, and of course he was forbidden to ask questions. There were no photographs of them in the house.

When he had been younger, Harry had dreamed and dreamed of some unknown relation coming to take him away, but it had never happened; the Dursleys were his only family. Yet sometimes he thought (or maybe hoped) that strangers in the street seemed to know him. Very strange strangers they were, too. A tiny man in a violet top hat had bowed to him once while out shopping with Aunt Petunia and Dudley. After asking Harry furiously if he knew the man, Aunt Petunia had rushed them out of the shop without buying anything. A wild-looking old woman dressed all in green had waved merrily at him once on a bus. A bald man in a very long purple coat had actually shaken his hand in the street the other day and then walked away without a word. The weirdest thing about all these people was the way they seemed to vanish the second Harry tried to get a closer look.

At school, Harry had no one. Everybody knew that Dudley's gang hated that odd Harry Potter in his baggy old clothes and broken glasses, and nobody liked to disagree with Dudley's gang.

_Wow_, Harry thought to himself after he'd pondered all of this. _My life is seriously f*^%-ed up. If any of those people who seemed to know me were in any way responsible for me being dumped into an abusive environment where I am psychologically tortured and made to feel worthless while being locked inside a cupboard and denied food for something I had no control over, I certainly won't be putting my arse on the line for those people. I mean, if they had the time to stop and say 'hi' to me on the street and they know who I am, they would logically have the time to make sure I'm doing all right and not in said abusive household. Ah, well, I'm sure no one's that much of a jerk._


	4. Letters From No One

What Should Have Happened in Harry Potter

**This was a difficult chapter to write as most of the problems sort of appear as the book progresses. **

**Okay, some of you have been confused about the story. I would just like to point out that this is not intended to flow like a normal story; I am basically taking parts of each chapter and rewriting how they would have actually turned out, even providing more than one scenario if the situation allows. Hope that resolved some issues.**

**I do not own Harry Potter.**

Letters From No One

The escape of the Brazilian boa constrictor earned Harry his longest-ever punishment. By the time he was allowed out of his cupboard again, the summer holidays had nearly started and the Dursleys were now facing charges for criminal negligence.

Of course, with Harry locked in his cupboard for so long, it stands to reason that any sensible educators at the school would launch an investigation into the apparent disappearance of a student. No matter how fervently the Dursleys denied knowledge of where Harry was, the school was becoming increasingly suspicious by the boy's absence and even went so far as to send a teacher to the house. As soon as Harry heard the arrival of the teacher who started asking about him, he called out from inside the cupboard for help. The revelation of Harry's home-life led to the aforementioned charges against the Dursleys and Harry was placed in foster care while Dudley was sent to Aunt Marge; Harry didn't mind being in foster care, it was certainly better than living with the Dursleys.

* * *

Dudley and Uncle Vernon came in, both with wrinkled noses because of the smell from Harry's new uniform. Uncle Vernon opened his newspaper as usual and Dudley banged his Smelting stick, which he carried everywhere, on the table.

They heard the click of the mail slot and flop of letters on the doormat.

"Get the mail, Dudley," said Uncle Vernon from behind his paper.

"Make Harry get it."

"Get the mail, Harry."

"Make Dudley get it."

"Poke him with your Smelting stick, Dudley."

Harry dodged the Smelting stick and went to get the mail. Three things lay on the doormat: a postcard from Uncle Vernon's sister Marge, who was vacationing on the Isle of Wight, a brown envelope that looked like a bill, and - a letter for Harry.

Harry picked it up and stared at it, his heart twanging like a giant elastic band. No one, ever, in his whole life, had written to him. Who would? He had no friends, no other relatives - he didn't belong to the library, so he'd never even got rude notes asking for books back. Yet here it was, a letter, addressed so plainly there could be no mistake:

Mr. H. Potter

The Cupboard under the Stairs

4 Privet Drive

Little Whinging

Surrey

The envelope was thick and heavy, made of yellowish parchment, and the address was written in emerald-green ink. There was no stamp.

Turning the envelope over, his hand trembling, Harry saw a purple wax seal bearing a coat of arms; a lion, an eagle, a badger, and a snake surrounding a large letter H.

"Hurry up, boy!" shouted Uncle Vernon from the kitchen. "What are you doing, checking for letter bombs?" He chuckled at his own joke.

Thinking quickly, Harry slipped the letter under the door of his cupboard so he could read it later as he knew very well that the Dursleys would confiscate it if they saw it. After carrying in the rest of the mail and finishing off his meager breakfast, Harry headed straight for his closet and opened the letter.

At first he thought it was a prank, a rather ridiculous one at that. Firstly, who uses parchment anymore? It is horribly out of date and probably quite expensive to make in relation to paper. Secondly, how the bloody hell was he supposed to respond if there was no return address or some method of taking the letter to its destination. Thirdly, for what _possible_ reason would he believe that something such as magic existed when all scientific evidence proved it didn't; sure, weird things happened around Harry that he couldn't explain, but there were many things that he couldn't understand about the world at his age.

Harry's heart sank at the prospect that his first real letter ever was nothing more than an outlandish joke.

* * *

That evening when he got back from work, Uncle Vernon did something he'd never done before; he visited Harry in his cupboard.

"Where's my letter?" said Harry, the moment Uncle Vernon had squeezed through the door. "Who's writing to me?"

"No one. It was addressed to you by mistake," said Uncle Vernon shortly. "I have burned it."

"You do realize that tampering with another person's mail is a crime?" he said evenly. "For withholding and even destroying something so clearly marked as my property, I am within my rights to press charges. How many other letters have I gotten that you've kept from me? I will have no choice but to inform the authorities that you are nothing more than a common thief and have an investigation launched into determining how much more of my property you have illegally tampered with."

"SILENCE!" yelled Uncle Vernon, and a couple of spiders fell from the ceiling. He took a few deep breaths and then forced his face into a smile, which looked quite painful.

"Er - yes, Harry - about this cupboard. Your aunt and I have been thinking... you're really getting a bit big for it... we think it might be nice if you moved into Dudley's second bedroom."

"Considering the fact that there was plenty of space all these years, the fact that I was stuffed into a closet while your son had a second bedroom for all his useless junk that he probably doesn't even care about nor appreciate is something that can be equated with child neglect," Harry replied. "That is something else I intend to bring up with the authorities when I contact them."

Vernon turned an ugly shade of puce and cursed his luck that he couldn't just get rid of the little brat.

* * *

Next morning at breakfast, everyone was rather quiet. Dudley was in shock. He'd screamed, whacked his father with his Smelting stick, been sick on purpose, kicked his mother, and thrown his tortoise through the greenhouse roof, and he still didn't have his room back. Harry was thinking about this time yesterday and bitterly wishing he'd opened the letter in the hall. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia kept looking at each other darkly.

When the mail arrived, Uncle Vernon, who seemed to be trying to be nice to Harry, made Dudley go and get it. They heard him banging things with his Smelting stick all the way down the hall. Then he shouted, "There's another one! 'Mr. H. Potter, The Smallest Bedroom, 4 Privet Drive - '"

With a strangled cry, Uncle Vernon leapt from his seat and ran down the hall, but Harry simply sat in his chair.

"What are you doing, boy?" Petunia asked incredulously.

"I'm not doing anything, Aunt Petunia."

"That's exactly my point. I thought you would go rushing out into the hall to try and get the letter."

Harry raised an eyebrow.

"Are you serious? With Dudley and Vernon out there, both of whom outweigh me by a good deal and are far more aggressive, I would be lucky to get out of that scrape with just a few minor bruises. As for the letter…well, I figure that if whoever wrote it is willing to write a second time after not receiving an answer the first day I got it, they will be just as persistent to continue writing until I _do_ get it. After all, most people don't usually expect a response to a normal letter after only twenty-four hours."

Uncle Vernon slumped into the room, the crumpled letter in his fist.

"Vernon, I think we might have to rethink the letter business a bit," Petunia said.

* * *

Uncle Vernon didn't go to work that day. He stayed at home and nailed up the mail slot.

"See," he explained to Aunt Petunia through a mouthful of nails, "if they can't deliver them they'll just give up."

"I'm not sure that'll work, Vernon."

"Oh, these people's minds work in strange ways, Petunia, they're not like you and me," said Uncle Vernon, trying to knock in a nail with the piece of fruitcake Aunt Petunia had just brought him.

"Of course, go ahead and listen to your paranoia and ignore the advice of your wife who has actually had contact with, though much to her dismay, the same sort of people we are trying to keep out. Therefore it stands to reason that I would be the only one in this house who is capable of actually knowing even the faintest bit how such people's minds work."

Vernon looked up from his work annoyed.

"Just get me some coffee, woman," he retorted.

* * *

On Sunday morning, Uncle Vernon sat down at the breakfast table looking tired and rather ill, but happy.

"No post on Sundays," he reminded them cheerfully as he spread marmalade on his newspapers, "no damn letters today-"

Something came whizzing down the kitchen chimney as he spoke and caught him sharply on the back of the head. Next moment, thirty or forty letters came pelting out of the fireplace like bullets. The Dursleys ducked, but Harry leapt into the air trying to catch one –

_Gee_, Harry thought, _maybe picking them out of the air isn't such a good idea as a large number of the letters have fallen onto the floor and are easily within reach and much more available to be concealed in my clothing so I can read them later. Should I abandon this pointless pursuit and simply pick one off the ground?...Nah, I'll keep trying to catch one._

* * *

They drove. And they drove. Even Aunt Petunia didn't dare ask where they were going. Every now and then Uncle Vernon would take a sharp turn and drive in the opposite direction for a while.

"Shake 'em off... shake 'em off," he would mutter whenever he did this.

They didn't stop to eat or drink all day. By nightfall Dudley was howling. He'd never had such a bad day in his life. He was hungry, he'd missed five television programs he'd wanted to see, and he'd never gone so long without blowing up an alien on his computer.

Uncle Vernon stopped at last outside a gloomy-looking hotel on the outskirts of a big city. Dudley and Harry shared a room with twin beds and damp, musty sheets. Dudley snored but Harry stayed awake, sitting on the windowsill, staring down at the lights of passing cars and wondering...

They ate stale cornflakes and cold tinned tomatoes on toast for breakfast the next day. They had just finished when the owner of the hotel came over to their table.

"'Scuse me, but is one of you Mr. H. Potter? Only I got about an 'undred of these at the front desk."

She held up a letter so they could read the green ink address:

Mr. H. Potter

Room 17

Railview Hotel

Cokeworth

Harry made a grab for the letter but Uncle Vernon knocked his hand out of the way. The woman stared.

"I'll take them," said Uncle Vernon, moving to stand up.

"Um, sir, no offense or anything," the woman said. "But considering the fact that the boy there was the first to respond to the name 'Harry Potter' and the letters are all addressed to him, I will have to ask his permission to give them to you as to not do so would be a tremendous oversight on my part and could possibly see me getting into legal trouble if I simply gave the letters to you without the permission of the owner.

"So, lad," she said to Harry. "Do you want this man here to take charge of your letters or read them yourself?"

Vernon slammed his head against the table in defeat as the Potter boy walked away with the hotel owner to finally get a look at those letters.

* * *

"Wouldn't it be better just to go home, dear?" Aunt Petunia suggested timidly, hours later, but Uncle Vernon didn't seem to hear her. Exactly what he was looking for, none of them knew. He drove them into the middle of a forest, got out, looked around, shook his head, got back in the car, and off they went again. The same thing happened in the middle of a plowed field, halfway across a suspension bridge, and at the top of a multilevel parking garage.

"Daddy's gone mad, hasn't he?" Dudley asked Aunt Petunia dully late that afternoon. Uncle Vernon had parked at the coast, locked them all inside the car, and disappeared.

It started to rain. Great drops beat on the roof of the car. Dudley sniveled.

"It's Monday," he told his mother. "The Great Humberto's on tonight. I want to stay somewhere with a television."

"Oh for the love of Christ, will you SHUT UP?!" Harry shouted at the fat boy. "You have absolutely _nothing_ to f*^%-ing complain about!"

"How dare you talk to my son like that, you little-" Petunia started, but Harry cut her off.

"And you! How dare you call yourself a parent if _this_" he pointed at Dudley "is what you brought into the civilized world? This lazy, fat git is complaining because, for once in his whole effing life, things aren't going his way and there's nothing he can do about it!" Harry turned to glare at Dudley. "You…you complete and utter PRICK! How do you think you'll manage in the real world when mummy and daddy won't be there to cater to your every f*^%-ing whim?! Either suck it up and grow a pair or I will personally dance on your untimely, shallow grave! Understand?!"

Dudley merely nodded and shrunk beneath his cousin's gaze.

"Good." Harry took a deep breath. "Glad I finally got that out of my system. It really isn't good for me to keep my anger bottled up all the time. After all, it could eventually overload and cause me to lash out at people I actually give a damn about when they've done something to annoy me and that would make me come across as a selfish berk."

* * *

As night fell, the promised storm blew up around them. Spray from the high waves splattered the walls of the hut and a fierce wind rattled the filthy windows. Aunt Petunia found a few moldy blankets in the second room and made up a bed for Dudley on the moth-eaten sofa. She and Uncle Vernon went off to the lumpy bed next door, and Harry was left to find the softest bit of floor he could and to curl up under the thinnest, most ragged blanket.

The storm raged more and more ferociously as the night went on. Harry couldn't sleep. He shivered and turned over, trying to get comfortable, his stomach rumbling with hunger. Dudley's snores were drowned by the low rolls of thunder that started near midnight. The lighted dial of Dudley's watch, which was dangling over the edge of the sofa on his fat wrist, told Harry he'd be eleven in ten minutes' time. He lay and watched his birthday tick nearer, wondering if the Dursleys would remember at all, wondering where the letter writer was now.

"You know," Harry thought aloud, "I don't know why I should be so depressed about not receiving the letters. I mean, considering that the letter-writer has consistently sent me at least one letter every single day, knowing my exact location despite the fact that there was no clear sign we were being watched, it stands to reason that it's only a matter of time before he or she finds this place. I'm not entirely sure how they are able to find me - perhaps some sort of homing device – all I do know is that said person or persons unknown have been able to find my exact location and know _exact_ details about that location."

Harry blinked several times.

"I wonder how concerned I should be that I have a stalker with an obsessive interest in underage boys."


	5. The Keeper of the Keys

What Should Have Happened in Harry Potter

**Just a little reminder, this story is not supposed to be read like a normal story. I basically just take out scenes where there is something wrong and write how is should've gone. This is supposed to be like a guide to spotting plot-holes in Harry Potter. **

**I found so much in this chapter; my God, it took forever to get it all down!**

**I don't own Harry Potter.**

The Keeper of the Keys

BOOM. They knocked again. Dudley jerked awake.

"Where's the cannon?" he said stupidly.

There was a crash behind them and Uncle Vernon came skidding into the room. He was holding a rifle in his hands - now they knew what had been in the long, thin package he had brought with them.

"Who's there?" he shouted. "I warn you - I'm armed!"

"Um, Uncle Vernon-"

"What is it, boy?!"

"I know this is probably a really bad time to ask this but…do you have a license to carry that firearm?"

"WHAT?!"

"It's just that…well, we _are_ in England and I know for a fact that firearms are extremely restricted here. While firearm legislation has gone through a series of reforms over the past hundred years, the most recent government bill on the subject, an amendment made in 1988 to the Firearms Act, which was last updated in 1968, has made private ownership of guns almost impossible. I'm not certain of the exact specifics of the law itself, but I doubt that you were able to acquire that weapon legally.

"Besides the questionable legality of the rifle you currently have in your hands, you are aware that there are two eleven-year-old children in your charge and that we could easily have gotten hurt by that rifle. Let's say, for example, that Dudley decided he was hungry and thought the package might have been hiding food; he opens it in the dark and accidentally pulls the trigger. You would then have to deal with your own son being seriously injured and it would be on your own head."

His aunt and uncle both stared at him.

"Shut up, boy," Vernon snapped.

* * *

**I have nothing against guns (in fact my dad has a whole stash of them and ammunition) and I know only as much about British gun laws as Wikipedia will tell me. All I am certain of is that it is highly unlikely Vernon, who lives in an upscale suburb where crime is likely very low, would have a gun license; and, even if he did, the rifle would probably have to be registered. Don't take my word for it, though; do the research for yourself if it bothers you.**

* * *

BOOM. They knocked again. Dudley jerked awake.

"Where's the cannon?" he said stupidly.

There was a crash behind them and Uncle Vernon came skidding into the room. He was holding a rifle in his hands - now they knew what had been in the long, thin package he had brought with them.

"Who's there?" he shouted. "I warn you - I'm armed!"

There was a pause. Then -

SMASH!

The door was hit with such force that it swung clean off its hinges and with a deafening crash landed flat on the floor.

A giant of a man was standing in the doorway. His face was almost completely hidden by a long, shaggy mane of hair and a wild, tangled beard, but you could make out his eyes, glinting like black beetles under all the hair.

The giant squeezed his way into the hut, stooping so that his head just brushed the ceiling. He bent down, picked up the door, and fitted it easily back into its frame. The noise of the storm outside dropped a little. He turned to look at them all.

"Couldn't make us a cup o' tea, could yeh? It's not been an easy journey..."

He strode over to the sofa where Dudley sat frozen with fear.

"Budge up, yeh great lump," said the stranger.

Dudley squeaked and ran to hide behind his mother, who was crouching, terrified, behind Uncle Vernon.

"An' here's Harry!" said the giant.

Harry looked up into the fierce, wild, shadowy face and saw that the beetle eyes were crinkled in a smile.

Harry, however, stared back incredulously.

"Beg your pardon, sir," Harry said firmly before the giant could speak. "But I think you owe the people here a bit of an apology."

"What?" the giant replied confused.

"Well, as much as I dislike my relatives, it doesn't change the fact that what you just did was incredibly rude. You knocked down the door after not being invited in, you call one of the building's residents a 'great lump' and order him to move from his seat, and you also make demands for a show of hospitality." Harry gave him a sideways look. "Excuse me for saying so, but that is not only extremely bad-mannered but is also illegal as you entered a house without permission."

Hagrid blinked a few times at the young Potter. This certainly hadn't turned out like expected.

* * *

**Harry was a bit out of character there, wasn't he? Let's try that scene again.**

* * *

BOOM. They knocked again. Dudley jerked awake.

"Where's the cannon?" he said stupidly.

There was a crash behind them and Uncle Vernon came skidding into the room. He was holding a rifle in his hands - now they knew what had been in the long, thin package he had brought with them.

"Who's there?" he shouted. "I warn you - I'm armed!"

There was a pause. Then -

SMASH!

The door was hit with such force that it swung clean off its hinges and with a deafening crash landed flat on the floor.

A giant of a man was standing in the doorway. His face was almost completely hidden by a long, shaggy mane of hair and a wild, tangled beard, but you could make out his eyes, glinting like black beetles under all the hair.

The giant squeezed his way into the hut, stooping so that his head just brushed the ceiling. He bent down, picked up the door, and fitted it easily back into its frame. The noise of the storm outside dropped a little. He turned to look at them all.

"Couldn't make us a cup o' tea, could yeh? It's not been an easy journey..."

He strode over to the sofa where Dudley sat frozen with fear.

"Budge up, yeh great lump," said the stranger.

Dudley squeaked and ran to hide behind his mother, who was crouching, terrified, behind Uncle Vernon.

"An' here's Harry!" said the giant.

Harry looked up into the fierce, wild, shadowy face and saw that the beetle eyes were crinkled in a smile.

"Las' time I saw you, you was only a baby," said the giant. "Yeh look a lot like yer dad, but yeh've got yer mom's eyes."

Uncle Vernon made a funny rasping noise.

"I demand that you leave at once, sir!" he said. "You are breaking and entering!"

"Ah, shut up, Dursley, yeh great prune," said the giant; he reached over the back of the sofa, jerked the gun out of Uncle Vernon's hands, bent it into a knot as easily as if it had been made of rubber, and threw it into a corner of the room.

Uncle Vernon made another funny noise, like a mouse being trodden on.

"Anyway - Harry," said the giant, turning his back on the Dursleys, "a very happy birthday to yeh. Got summat fer yeh here - I mighta sat on it at some point, but it'll taste all right."

From an inside pocket of his black overcoat he pulled a slightly squashed box. Harry opened it with trembling fingers. Inside was a large, sticky chocolate cake with Happy Birthday Harry written on it in green icing.

Harry looked up at the giant.

"While I am thankful that someone actually took my birthday into consideration for once in my life, I do have some issues with this situation. First is that they taught us at school to never accept anything from strangers; as I have no idea who you are, you can see why I would be skeptical. Secondly, since you seem to know who I am then why have I never heard from you in the past? Thirdly, if you are in any way connected with those strange letters which have been sent to me, I would like to know why it took you until now to appear in person if those letters were so important."

Hagrid simply blinked in response. This wasn't how he'd expected things to happen.

* * *

A braver man than Vernon Dursley would have quailed under the furious look Hagrid now gave him; when Hagrid spoke, his every syllable trembled with rage.

"You never told him? Never told him what was in the letter Dumbledore left fer him? I was there! I saw Dumbledore leave it, Dursley! An' you've kept it from him all these years?"

"Kept what from me?" said Harry eagerly.

"STOP! I FORBID YOU!" yelled Uncle Vernon in panic.

Aunt Petunia gave a gasp of horror.

"Ah, go boil yer heads, both of yeh," said Hagrid. "Harry - yer a wizard."

There was silence inside the hut. Only the sea and the whistling wind could be heard.

"Well, that explains a lot," said Harry.

Hagrid blinked at him.

"Okay," Harry said calmly. "While I didn't expect the outright term 'wizard' I figured there was something different about me. After all, it wasn't that long ago that there was an incident at the zoo that I can't explain. But, now that you've said it out loud, I guess it kinda does make sense. So, what do I need to know about being a wizard?"

* * *

**Think that could've gone differently? Okay, then. Harry's going to be playing devil's advocate.**

* * *

"You never told him? Never told him what was in the letter Dumbledore left fer him? I was there! I saw Dumbledore leave it, Dursley! An' you've kept it from him all these years?"

"Kept what from me?" said Harry eagerly.

"STOP! I FORBID YOU!" yelled Uncle Vernon in panic.

Aunt Petunia gave a gasp of horror.

"Ah, go boil yer heads, both of yeh," said Hagrid. "Harry - yer a wizard."

There was silence inside the hut. Only the sea and the whistling wind could be heard.

"All right, time-out," said Harry. "You actually were there when I was placed with the Dursleys?"

"Well, yeah," said Hagrid. "I saw Professor Dumbledore put you on the doorstep myself."

Harry blinked several times.

"So, this guy Dumbledore dumped me on a doorstep, leaving me with a letter, according to you, and you think you have the right to start screaming at my relatives?"

"What?" said Hagrid.

"Well, firstly, my relatives are clearly not magical, so how could they tell me anything of significance about this 'magical world' you're talking about? I mean, sure, even if there was a letter explaining what happened, I doubt it contained enough information for me to know what I need to about this magical world. Secondly, my aunt and uncle have a long-established dislike of my parents, what obligation did they have to tell me anything anyway? As far as I can tell, my aunt and uncle were acting within their rights to raise me without knowledge of a world that got my parents killed."

"What?" gasped Aunt Petunia. "How did you…?"

"Oh, come on, you didn't actually think I'd buy that stupid excuse about them dying in a car crash, did you?" Harry turned back to Hagrid. "I'm sorry, Mr. Hagrid, but as far as I can tell my aunt and uncle were just acting within their sphere of knowledge about the magical world, even though they could've shown me this supposed letter or treated me with a modicum of human decency. I don't see why I or anyone else should throw stones at them when I was just dumped on their doorstep without the courtesy of an explanation or request for their consent. As far as I can tell, this magical world is full of jerks who think they can get away with taking advantage of people by abandoning an unwanted child on their hapless relatives simply because of a certain advantage they have."

There was a silence you could cut with a knife.

* * *

Harry stretched out his hand at last to take the yellowish envelope, addressed in emerald green to Mr. H. Potter, The Floor, Hut-on-the-Rock, The Sea. He pulled out the letter and read:

HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY

Headmaster: ALBUS DUMBLEDORE

(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)

Dear Mr. Potter,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.

Term begins on September 1. We await your owl by no later than July 31.

Yours sincerely,

Minerva McGonagall,

Deputy Headmistress

Questions exploded inside Harry's head like fireworks and he couldn't decide which to ask first. After a few minutes he stammered, "And this information is coming to me _now_?"

There was a collective exclamation of "Huh?"

Harry, however, was clearly angry.

"I'm left to be starved, humiliated, and stuffed in a closet for years over something I have no control over, and you bastards think it's perfectly acceptable to just waltz in here and say 'oh, it's really all right, you just have supernatural powers that we are now going to teach you how to use so you can protect yourself'?" Harry's glare turned deadly. "How many other children are you sick jerks leaving to be treated like mutants and freaks just because of powers they have no control over? You have some nerve coming in here and telling me this after ten years of feeling like there was something wrong with me."

He then turned to glare at his relatives.

"And you! You knew all along that I had these abilities! If you had just sat down with me and explained what it was, maybe I could've learned better control over it and maybe even used these abilities to help you! But noooo, you had to try and beat them out of me instead of trying to convince me that they were dangerous and that I should avoid them." Harry broke down into hysterics. "You bastards. You sick, sick lot of bastards."

* * *

"Where was I?" said Hagrid, but at that moment, Uncle Vernon, still ashen-faced but looking very angry, moved into the firelight.

"He's not going," he said.

Hagrid grunted.

"I'd like ter see a great Muggle like you stop him," he said.

"A what?" said Harry, interested.

"A Muggle," said Hagrid, "it's what we call nonmagic folk like them. An' it's your bad luck you grew up in a family o' the biggest Muggles I ever laid eyes on."

"That's not very nice," Harry said with a huff.

"What?"

"I mean, the word 'muggle' is actually a real word. I remember hearing it used as slang to refer to a person who is inept or unorganized. If they are people without magic, why can't you just call them 'non-magicals' instead of resorting to unflattering pejoratives? I mean, I don't like it when they call me a 'freak' so why should I sink to their level by using insulting language like that?"

Everyone just stared at him.

* * *

**It's true! I actually saw the word "muggle" used before I ever read Harry Potter; it was in this little booklet thing I got. I can't remember what it was called but it was like "Lizzie McGuire's guide to slang" or something like that and the word "muggle" was defined as a person who doesn't really know what he/she is doing. Frankly, if someone called me a "muggle" I would be very insulted.**

* * *

"Where was I?" said Hagrid, but at that moment, Uncle Vernon, still ashen-faced but looking very angry, moved into the firelight.

"He's not going," he said.

Hagrid grunted.

"I'd like ter see a great Muggle like you stop him," he said.

"A what?" said Harry, interested.

"A Muggle," said Hagrid, "it's what we call nonmagic folk like them. An' it's your bad luck you grew up in a family o' the biggest Muggles I ever laid eyes on."

"We swore when we took him in we'd put a stop to that rubbish," said Uncle Vernon, "swore we'd stamp it out of him! Wizard indeed!"

"You knew?" said Harry. "You knew I'm a - a wizard?"

"Knew!" shrieked Aunt Petunia suddenly. "Knew! Of course we knew! How could you not be, my dratted sister being what she was? Oh, she got a letter just like that and disappeared off to that - that school - and came home every vacation with her pockets full of frog spawn, turning teacups into rats. I was the only one who saw her for what she was - a freak! But for my mother and father, oh no, it was Lily this and Lily that, they were proud of having a witch in the family!"

She stopped to draw a deep breath and then went ranting on. It seemed she had been wanting to say all this for years.

"Then she met that Potter at school and they left and got married and had you, and of course I knew you'd be just the same, just as strange, just as - as - abnormal - and then, if you please, she went and got herself blown up and we got landed with you!"

Harry had gone very white. As soon as he found his voice he said, "Blown up? You told me they died in a car crash!"

"CAR CRASH!" roared Hagrid, jumping up so angrily that the Dursleys scuttled back to their corner. "How could a car crash kill Lily an' James Potter? It's an outrage! A scandal! Harry Potter not knowin' his own story when every kid in our world knows his name!"

"But why? What happened?" Harry asked urgently.

The anger faded from Hagrid's face. He looked suddenly anxious.

"I never expected this," he said, in a low, worried voice. "I had no idea, when Dumbledore told me there might be trouble gettin' hold of yeh, how much yeh didn't know. Ah, Harry, I don' know if I'm the right person ter tell yeh - but someone's gotta - yeh can't go off ter Hogwarts not knowin'."

"Okay, if you're not comfortable talking about it then we can find someone who is," Harry said.

"What?"

"Well, if you admit that you're not the best person to explain things to me then can you contact someone who is more qualified?" Harry said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "I mean, what about this Dumbledore guy?"

"The headmaster is very busy, Harry…"

"Since he was the one who saw fit to dump me with people he probably knew damn well couldn't explain everything to me, he owes me an explanation about more than just why I was left there in the first place," Harry retorted sharply. "I have a lot of things I want to talk to this Dumbledore guy about or I will be inclined to pursue my education elsewhere."

Hagrid gaped at Harry.

"Don't look so shocked," Harry said. "Honestly, it's like your headmaster wanted me to be thrown headfirst into a world I knew nothing about so that I wouldn't question how things are done in it."

At that moment, a shiver ran up Dumbledore's spine and he thought: _$#*! It feels like someone's on to me._

* * *

The anger faded from Hagrid's face. He looked suddenly anxious.

"I never expected this," he said, in a low, worried voice. "I had no idea, when Dumbledore told me there might be trouble gettin' hold of yeh, how much yeh didn't know. Ah, Harry, I don' know if I'm the right person ter tell yeh - but someone's gotta - yeh can't go off ter Hogwarts not knowin'."

He threw a dirty look at the Dursleys.

"Well, it's best yeh know as much as I can tell yeh - mind, I can't tell yeh everythin', it's a great myst'ry, parts of it..."

He sat down, stared into the fire for a few seconds, and then said, "It begins, I suppose, with - with a person called - but it's incredible yeh don't know his name, everyone in our world knows-"

"Who?"

"Well - I don' like sayin' the name if I can help it. No one does."

"Why not?"

"Gulpin' gargoyles, Harry, people are still scared. Blimey, this is difficult. See, there was this wizard who went... bad. As bad as you could go. Worse. Worse than worse. His name was..."

Hagrid gulped, but no words came out.

"Could you write it down?" Harry suggested.

"Nah - can't spell it. All right - Voldemort." Hagrid shuddered. "Don' make me say it again."

"Question!" Harry exclaimed.

"Yeah, Harry?"

"Well, I don't really see why people would be so scared to say his name."

"He was an evil, murderin' monster who slaughtered hundreds of innocents without remorse."

"Yeah, I get that, but why don't people do that in the non-magical world for mass-murderers, then?"

"Sorry?"

"Well, there are evil dictators like Hitler or Stalin who have killed millions upon millions of people. Or, in more recent decades, serial killers like Ted Bundy in America, or the leaders of terrorist organizations. People say their names all the time without being afraid they're going to pop out of the woodworks."

"Well, it's diff'rent in the magical world, okay?

"Anyway, this - this wizard, about twenty years ago now, started lookin' fer followers. Got 'em, too - some were afraid, some just wanted a bit o' his power, 'cause he was gettin' himself power, all right. Dark days, Harry. Didn't know who ter trust, didn't dare get friendly with strange wizards or witches... terrible things happened. He was takin' over…"

"Question!"

"What is it now?"

"Well, if this guy was so terrible, why weren't warnings put out in the non-magical community?"

"Because it would've violated the Statute of Secrecy."

"Oh, so innocent people could've been viciously slaughtered and the magical world didn't decide to put out a warning because it would've violated some safeguard to hide themselves? How many non-magicals were killed by this guy, anyway?"

"As I was sayin'," Hagrid continued impatiently. "Some stood up to him - an' he killed 'em. Horribly. One o' the only safe places left was Hogwarts. Reckon Dumbledore's the only one You-Know-Who was afraid of. Didn't dare try takin' the school, not jus' then, anyway."

"Question!"

Hagrid gave a deep sigh and asked: "What now?"

"Well, if Hogwarts was the safest place to be, did Dumbledore decide to open it up as a safe-house to target groups. After all, if it's large enough to accommodate large numbers of magical students the length and breadth of Great Britain, surely it could have been used to safely house whatever groups of people were in immediate danger at least."

"May I finish me story?!" Hagrid shouted and Harry nodded. "Now, yer mum an' dad were as good a witch an' wizard as I ever knew. Head boy an' girl at Hogwarts in their day! Suppose the myst'ry is why You-Know-Who never tried to get 'em on his side before... probably knew they were too close ter Dumbledore ter want anythin' ter do with the Dark Side.

"Maybe he thought he could persuade 'em... maybe he just wanted 'em outta the way. All anyone knows is, he turned up in the village where you was all living, on Halloween ten years ago. You was just a year old. He came ter yer house an' - an'-"

Hagrid suddenly pulled out a very dirty, spotted handkerchief and blew his nose with a sound like a foghorn.

"Sorry," he said. "But it's that sad - knew yer mum an' dad, an' nicer people yeh couldn't find - anyway...

"You-Know-Who killed 'em. An' then - an' this is the real myst'ry of the thing - he tried to kill you, too. Wanted ter make a clean job of it, I suppose, or maybe he just liked killin' by then. But he couldn't do it. Never wondered how you got that mark on yer forehead? That was no ordinary cut. That's what yeh get when a powerful, evil curse touches yeh - took care of yer mum an' dad an' yer house, even - but it didn't work on you, an' that's why yer famous, Harry. No one ever lived after he decided ter kill 'em, no one except you, an' he'd killed some o' the best witches an' wizards of the age - the McKinnons, the Bones, the Prewetts - an' you was only a baby, an' you lived."

"And I'm famous because of that?" Harry said skeptically. "Okay, I'm willing to give everyone the benefit of the doubt when it comes to Voldemort's" Hagrid shuddered "mysterious defeat on the grounds that it is clearly a mind-boggling event. However, what I can't understand is why _I'm_ famous. Okay, yes, it sounds like something strange did happen, but how can anyone know it had something to do with _me_?

"I was only a one-year-old, right? So how would I have defeated this guy, for Christ's sake? I mean, is he even dead? What proof is there that he was defeated at all? The only people in that house were me, my parents, and Voldemort. Anything from a backfiring spell to space aliens could've been behind it. So, how can people consider me famous for something I don't think I even had anything to do with?!"

Hagrid just grit his teeth. Couldn't the lad just accept that he was famous and not ask him a bunch of questions he wasn't sure how to answer?

* * *

Something very painful was going on in Harry's mind. As Hagrid's story came to a close, he saw again the blinding flash of green light, more clearly than he had ever remembered it before - and he remembered something else, for the first time in his life: a high, cold, cruel laugh.

Hagrid was watching him sadly.

"Took yeh from the ruined house myself, on Dumbledore's orders. Brought yeh ter this lot..."

"Load of old tosh," said Uncle Vernon. Harry jumped; he had almost forgotten that the Dursleys were there. Uncle Vernon certainly seemed to have got back his courage. He was glaring at Hagrid and his fists were clenched.

"Now, you listen here, boy," he snarled, "I accept there's something strange about you, probably nothing a good beating wouldn't have cured - and as for all this about your parents, well, they were weirdoes, no denying it, and the world's better off without them in my opinion - asked for all they got, getting mixed up with these wizarding types - just what I expected, always knew they'd come to a sticky end-"

But at that moment, Hagrid leapt from the sofa and drew a battered pink umbrella from inside his coat. Pointing this at Uncle Vernon like a sword, he said, "I'm warning you, Dursley - I'm warning you - one more word..."

In danger of being speared on the end of an umbrella by a bearded giant, Uncle Vernon's courage failed again; he flattened himself against the wall and fell silent.

"That's better," said Hagrid, breathing heavily and sitting back down on the sofa, which this time sagged right down to the floor.

Harry, meanwhile, still had questions to ask, hundreds of them.

"But what happened to Vol-, sorry - I mean, You-Know-Who?"

"Good question, Harry. Disappeared. Vanished. Same night he tried ter kill you. Makes yeh even more famous. That's the biggest myst'ry, see... he was gettin' more an' more powerful - why'd he go?

"Some say he died. Codswallop, in my opinion. Dunno if he had enough human left in him to die. Some say he's still out there, bidin' his time, like, but I don' believe it. People who was on his side came back ter ours. Some of 'em came outta kinda trances. Don' reckon they could've done if he was comin' back.

"Most of us reckon he's still out there somewhere but lost his powers. Too weak to carry on. 'Cause somethin' about you finished him, Harry. There was somethin' goin' on that night he hadn't counted on - I dunno what it was, no one does - but somethin' about you stumped him, all right."

"Okay, then, what's been done to verify it?" asked Harry.

"Huh?"

"Well, if people still suspect that Vol-that You-Know-Who is still alive, then there must've been an investigation. After all, you don't assume someone is dead just because they've disappeared for a number of years. Was a body even found at the site? For all the magical world knows, he could just be building up his forces and waiting for the right time to strike. So, tell me, what has been done to investigate the events of that night?"

Hagrid just stared at Harry with a look of deep confusion.

"Um, Mr. Hagrid, are you all right?"

"Boy, there's something you need to know about these magical types," Aunt Petunia said primly. "Say even a little bit of logic and they freeze up. Your mother found it incredibly irritating in all the years she went to that blasted school. I might not have liked my sister very much, but at least she wasn't as hopeless as the rest of the lot."

* * *

Hagrid looked at Harry with warmth and respect blazing in his eyes, but Harry, instead of feeling pleased and proud, felt quite sure there had been a horrible mistake. A wizard? Him? How could he possibly be? He'd spent his life being clouted by Dudley, and bullied by Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon; if he was really a wizard, why hadn't they been turned into warty toads every time they'd tried to lock him in his cupboard? If he'd once defeated the greatest sorcerer in the world, how come Dudley had always been able to kick him around like a football?

"Hagrid," he said quietly, "I think you must have made a mistake. I don't think I can be a wizard."

To his surprise, Hagrid chuckled.

"Not a wizard, eh? Never made things happen when you was scared or angry?"

Harry looked into the fire. Now he came to think about it... every odd thing that had ever made his aunt and uncle furious with him had happened when he, Harry, had been upset or angry... chased by Dudley's gang, he had somehow found himself out of their reach... dreading going to school with that ridiculous haircut, he'd managed to make it grow back... and the very last time Dudley had hit him, hadn't he got his revenge, without even realizing he was doing it? Hadn't he set a boa constrictor on him?

Harry looked back at Hagrid, smiling, and saw that Hagrid was positively beaming at him.

"See?" said Hagrid. "Harry Potter, not a wizard - you wait, you'll be right famous at Hogwarts."

But Uncle Vernon wasn't going to give in without a fight.

"Haven't I told you he's not going?" he hissed. "He's going to Stonewall High and he'll be grateful for it. I've read those letters and he needs all sorts of rubbish - spell books and wands and-"

"If he wants ter go, a great Muggle like you won't stop him," growled Hagrid. "Stop Lily an' James Potter's son goin' ter Hogwarts! Yer mad. His name's been down ever since he was born. He's off ter the finest school of witchcraft and wizardry in the world. Seven years there and he won't know himself. He'll be with youngsters of his own sort, fer a change, an' he'll be under the greatest headmaster Hogwarts ever had Albus Dumbled-"

"I AM NOT PAYING FOR SOME CRACKPOT OLD FOOL TO TEACH HIM MAGIC TRICKS!" yelled Uncle Vernon.

But he had finally gone too far. Hagrid seized his umbrella and whirled it over his head, "NEVER - " he thundered, " - INSULT - ALBUS - DUMBLEDORE - IN - FRONT - OF - ME!"

He brought the umbrella swishing down through the air to point at Dudley - there was a flash of violet light, a sound like a firecracker, a sharp squeal, and the next second, Dudley was dancing on the spot with his hands clasped over his fat bottom, howling in pain. When he turned his back on them, Harry saw a curly pig's tail poking through a hole in his trousers.

Uncle Vernon roared. Pulling Aunt Petunia and Dudley into the other room, he cast one last terrified look at Hagrid and slammed the door behind them.

Hagrid looked down at his umbrella and stroked his beard.

"Shouldn'ta lost me temper," he said ruefully, "but it didn't work anyway. Meant ter turn him into a pig, but I suppose he was so much like a pig anyway there wasn't much left ter do."

He cast a sideways look at Harry under his bushy eyebrows only to be startled by the irritated expression Harry was giving him.

"As much as I dislike my relatives, I don't see on what grounds you based hexing my cousin," Harry said. "Firstly, Dudley wasn't the one to insult this Dumbledore guy, meaning you had no business attacking him. Secondly, responding to insults in such a way is a poor example to set for young, impressionable minds as it justifies using violence against people who disagree with you for any reason. Thirdly, it reinforces my relatives', apparently justified, fear of magic as it is something they can't defend themselves against. And, finally, who do you think they are going to blame for this later?"

Hagrid looked very sheepish.

"Guess I didn' think o' that," he said.

Harry slapped his palm to his forehead.


	6. Diagon Alley

What Should have Happened in Harry Potter

Diagon Alley

Harry woke early the next morning. Although he could tell it was daylight, he kept his eyes shut tight.

"It was a dream," he told himself firmly. "I dreamed a giant called Hagrid came to tell me I was going to a school for wizards. When I open my eyes I'll be at home in my cupboard."

There was suddenly a loud tapping noise.

And there's Aunt Petunia knocking on the door, Harry thought, his heart sinking. But he still didn't open his eyes. It had been such a good dream.

Of course, the sound of Aunt Petunia's knocking was such a familiar sound that Harry would have certainly been able to tell the difference between it and, say, an owl tapping against a glass window. Harry opened his eyes and saw that he had been wrong. There was, in fact, an owl tapping against the window.

_Hmm, I wonder how I couldn't tell the difference between two things that would clearly sound different_, Harry thought. _Especially when you consider the fact that Aunt Petunia's knocking is often accompanied by her shrill command for me to wake up._

* * *

**And repeat.**

* * *

Harry woke early the next morning. Although he could tell it was daylight, he kept his eyes shut tight.

"It was a dream," he told himself firmly. "I dreamed a giant called Hagrid came to tell me I was going to a school for wizards. When I open my eyes I'll be at home in my cupboard."

There was suddenly a loud tapping noise.

And there's Aunt Petunia knocking on the door, Harry thought, his heart sinking. But he still didn't open his eyes. It had been such a good dream.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

"All right," Harry mumbled, "I'm getting up."

He sat up and Hagrid's heavy coat fell off him. The hut was full of sunlight, the storm was over, Hagrid himself was asleep on the collapsed sofa, and there was an owl rapping its claw on the window, a newspaper held in its beak.

Harry scrambled to his feet, so happy he felt as though a large balloon was swelling inside him. He went straight to the window and jerked it open. The owl swooped in and dropped the newspaper on top of Hagrid, who didn't wake up. The owl then fluttered onto the floor and began to attack Hagrid's coat.

"Don't do that."

Harry tried to wave the owl out of the way, but it snapped its beak fiercely at him and carried on savaging the coat.

"Hagrid!" said Harry loudly. "There's an owl-"

"Pay him," Hagrid grunted into the sofa.

"What?"

"He wants payin' fer deliverin' the paper. Look in the pockets."

Hagrid's coat seemed to be made of nothing but pockets - bunches of keys, slug pellets, balls of string, peppermint humbugs, teabags... finally, Harry pulled out a handful of strange-looking coins.

"Give him five Knuts," said Hagrid sleepily.

"Knuts?"

"The little bronze ones."

Harry counted out five little bronze coins, and the owl held out his leg so Harry could put the money into a small leather pouch tied to it. Then he flew off through the open window.

Hagrid yawned loudly, sat up, and stretched. He was startled by the put-upon expression on Harry's face.

"Somethin' wrong, Harry?"

"Yeah, there is," Harry said. "Firstly, your instruction that the coins to pay that owl were in your coat pockets was not exactly helpful as your coat is, quite literally, made of pockets and took me longer than I would have had to if you had simply explained which pocket they were in. Second, it was rather insensitive of you to simply assume I would know which coins to give the owl simply by saying the name of the kind of coin. Thirdly, if you were getting up anyway, why didn't you simply show me what to do?"

Hagrid gaped at Harry, causing the boy to slap himself on the forehead.

* * *

Hagrid yawned loudly, sat up, and stretched.

"Best be off, Harry, lots ter do today, gotta get up ter London an' buy all yer stuff fer school."

Harry was turning over the wizard coins and looking at them. He had just thought of something that made him feel as though the happy balloon inside him had got a puncture.

"Um - Hagrid?"

"Mm?" said Hagrid, who was pulling on his huge boots.

"I haven't got any money - and you heard Uncle Vernon last night... he won't pay for me to go and learn magic."

"Don't worry about that," said Hagrid, standing up and scratching his head. "D'yeh think yer parents didn't leave yeh anything?"

"Well, considering I've spent my whole life being told that they were jobless, good-for-nothing drunks who got killed in a car crash, what else am I expected to think? I mean, even your explanation about them last night didn't really give me a complete overview of their importance in the world. Did they have money, jobs, a socio-political position? How am I supposed to know if they had any means of providing for me and my education if I know next to nothing about them?"

Hagrid simply stared at Harry.

* * *

**Yes, repeats will occur throughout the story because there are often several ways they could've gone.**

* * *

Hagrid yawned loudly, sat up, and stretched.

"Best be off, Harry, lots ter do today, gotta get up ter London an' buy all yer stuff fer school."

Harry was turning over the wizard coins and looking at them. He had just thought of something that made him feel as though the happy balloon inside him had got a puncture.

"Um - Hagrid?"

"Mm?" said Hagrid, who was pulling on his huge boots.

"I haven't got any money - and you heard Uncle Vernon last night... he won't pay for me to go and learn magic."

"Don't worry about that," said Hagrid, standing up and scratching his head. "D'yeh think yer parents didn't leave yeh anything?"

"But if their house was destroyed-"

"They didn' keep their gold in the house, boy!"

"Well, how am I supposed to know that? After all, in the Muggle fairy-tales, witches and wizards keep gold and gems in treasure chests in their homes. I mean, you can't just assume I'll know any better about the magical world; because, in case you've forgotten, I grew up in the non-magical world without any idea about how things are done in the magical one."

Hagrid just stared at Harry.

* * *

Harry followed Hagrid out onto the rock. The sky was quite clear now and the sea gleamed in the sunlight. The boat Uncle Vernon had hired was still there, with a lot of water in the bottom after the storm.

"How did you get here?" Harry asked, looking around for another boat.

"Flew," said Hagrid.

"Uh, could you elaborate on that?"

"Huh?"

"It's just, what exactly do you mean by 'flew'? Did you use some sort of magical device or winged animal, or what?"

"Oh, very simple, I just…"

* * *

**That's right, folks. Rowling never explained how Hagrid 'flew' to the island.**

* * *

Harry followed Hagrid out onto the rock. The sky was quite clear now and the sea gleamed in the sunlight. The boat Uncle Vernon had hired was still there, with a lot of water in the bottom after the storm.

"How did you get here?" Harry asked, looking around for another boat.

"Flew," said Hagrid.

"Flew?"

"Yeah - but we'll go back in this. Not s'pposed ter use magic now I've got yeh."

They settled down in the boat, Harry still staring at Hagrid, trying to imagine him flying.

"Seems a shame ter row, though," said Hagrid, giving Harry another of his sideways looks. "If I was ter - er - speed things up a bit, would yeh mind not mentionin' it at Hogwarts?"

"Uh, sure, I have no problem with that," said Harry. "And, not that I really care, but how are the Dursleys going to get back to shore?"

* * *

**That's another thing, how did the Dursleys get back if Harry and Hagrid took the boat which was the only means of transport on and off the island?**

* * *

"Why would you be mad to try and rob Gringotts?" Harry asked.

"Spells - enchantments," said Hagrid, unfolding his newspaper as he spoke. "They say there's dragons guardin' the high security vaults. And then yeh gotta find yer way - Gringotts is hundreds of miles under London, see. Deep under the Underground. Yeh'd die of hunger tryin' ter get out, even if yeh did manage ter get yer hands on summat."

Harry sat and thought about this while Hagrid read his newspaper, the Daily Prophet. Harry had learned from Uncle Vernon that people liked to be left alone while they did this, but it was very difficult, he'd never had so many questions in his life.

"Ministry o' Magic messin' things up as usual," Hagrid muttered, turning the page.

"There's a Ministry of Magic?" Harry asked, before he could stop himself.

"'Course," said Hagrid. "They wanted Dumbledore fer Minister, o' course, but he'd never leave Hogwarts, so old Cornelius Fudge got the job. Bungler if ever there was one. So he pelts Dumbledore with owls every morning, askin' fer advice."

"But what does a Ministry of Magic do?"

"Well, their main job is to keep it from the Muggles that there's still witches an' wizards up an' down the country."

"Why?"

"Why? Blimey, Harry, everyone'd be wantin' magic solutions to their problems. Nah, we're best left alone."

"Okay, but would that really be so bad?" said Harry. "Just think of all the good that could be done for those without magic. What about the application of magic in the field of medicine or national defense? Think of all the human lives that could be saved if magic was brought in to help. Just because some people are born without the ability to use magic doesn't mean they are any less deserving of all the benefits that magic could provide. Yes, there is a risk that magic could be misused, but isn't it a risk worth taking if it means untold good for the human race?"

Hagrid stared blankly at Harry until the boat bumped up against the shore.

"Oh, look, we're here," he said. "Come on, Harry, it's time to find yeh yer school supplies."

Harry slapped himself on the forehead.

* * *

"Why would you be mad to try and rob Gringotts?" Harry asked.

"Spells - enchantments," said Hagrid, unfolding his newspaper as he spoke. "They say there's dragons guardin' the high security vaults. And then yeh gotta find yer way - Gringotts is hundreds of miles under London, see. Deep under the Underground. Yeh'd die of hunger tryin' ter get out, even if yeh did manage ter get yer hands on summat."

Harry sat and thought about this while Hagrid read his newspaper, the Daily Prophet. Harry had learned from Uncle Vernon that people liked to be left alone while they did this, but it was very difficult, he'd never had so many questions in his life.

"Ministry o' Magic messin' things up as usual," Hagrid muttered, turning the page.

"There's a Ministry of Magic?" Harry asked, before he could stop himself.

"'Course," said Hagrid. "They wanted Dumbledore fer Minister, o' course, but he'd never leave Hogwarts, so old Cornelius Fudge got the job. Bungler if ever there was one. So he pelts Dumbledore with owls every morning, askin' fer advice."

"Okay, well, if this guy Fudge is such an incompetent, how did he get the job? Surely there must have been a better candidate?"

"Well, like I said, Dumbledore refused ter-"

"That's not what I am asking. And how does the electoral process work in the magical community? If this Ministry of Magic is part of the British government, does that mean the government at large is aware of the magical community? If the magical government is anything like the non-magical one then that means there are at least two political parties and the Ministry itself answers to the Prime Minister of Great Britain. So, how does this Ministry work?"

"Uhhh, oh, would you look at that, we're here!"

Harry slapped himself on the forehead.

* * *

Passersby stared a lot at Hagrid as they walked through the little town to the station. Harry couldn't blame them. Not only was Hagrid twice as tall as anyone else, he kept pointing at perfectly ordinary things like parking meters and saying loudly, "See that, Harry? Things these Muggles dream up, eh?"

"Hagrid," said Harry, panting a bit as he ran to keep up, "don't you think you should be a bit more discreet?"

"Eh?"

"Well, you were just telling me about the importance of the magical world staying hidden and yet you're shouting about perfectly ordinary things and drawing unneeded attention."

"Oh, oops."

* * *

Passersby stared a lot at Hagrid as they walked through the little town to the station. Harry couldn't blame them. Not only was Hagrid twice as tall as anyone else, he kept pointing at perfectly ordinary things like parking meters and saying loudly, "See that, Harry? Things these Muggles dream up, eh?"

"Hagrid," said Harry, panting a bit as he ran to keep up, "did you say there are dragons at Gringotts?"

"Well, so they say," said Hagrid. "Crikey, I'd like a dragon."

"You'd like one?"

"Wanted one ever since I was a kid - here we go."

They had reached the station. There was a train to London in five minutes' time. Hagrid, who didn't understand "Muggle money," as he called it, gave the bills to Harry so he could buy their tickets.

People stared more than ever on the train. Hagrid took up two seats and sat knitting what looked like a canary-yellow circus tent.

"Still got yer letter, Harry?" he asked as he counted stitches.

Harry took the parchment envelope out of his pocket.

"Good," said Hagrid. "There's a list there of everything yeh need."

Harry unfolded a second piece of paper he hadn't noticed the night before, and read:

_HOGWARTS SCHOOL o f WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY_

_UNIFORM_

_First-year students will require:_

_1. Three sets of plain work robes (black)_

_2. One plain pointed hat (black) for day wear_

_3. One pair of protective gloves (dragon hide or similar)_

_4. One winter cloak (black, silver fastenings)_

_Please note that all pupils' clothes should carry name tags_

_COURSE BOOKS_

_All students should have a copy of each of the following:_

_The Standard Book of Spells (Grade 1) by Miranda Goshawk_

_A History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot_

_Magical Theory by Adalbert Waffling_

_A Beginners' Guide to Transfiguration by Emeric Switch_

_One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi by Phyllida Spore_

_Magical Drafts and Potions by Arsenius Jigger_

_Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander_

_The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection by Quentin Trimble_

_OTHER EQUIPMENT_

_1 wand_

_1 cauldron (pewter, standard size 2)_

_1 set of glass or crystal phials_

_1 telescope set_

_1 brass scales_

_Students may also bring an owl OR a cat OR a toad_

_PARENTS ARE REMINDED THAT FIRST YEARS ARE NOT ALLOWED THEIR OWN BROOMSTICKS_

"Um, Hagrid, I've got a question about the school supplies list," said Harry.

"What is it, Harry?"

"Well, it's just, is magic the only thing I'm going to be learning at Hogwarts?"

"Uh, yeah, what else would you need to learn?"

"Math, Science, English, maybe a second language. Do you mean to tell me that I'm not going to get a standard secondary education?"

"Well, uh, magic…"

"Yeah, yeah, magic is all well and good, but what about educating students for the real world? Surely there must be some who want to learn ordinary subjects in addition to magic."

"Well, you don't really need Muggle subjects if you're going into a magical career."

"What about grammar? Surely an English class would be necessary for students to write decent essays? What about preparation for a college education?"

"That's simple, Harry. The magical world doesn't have colleges. You enter into an apprenticeship right after you finish Hogwarts."

Harry blinked Hagrid several times.

"I'm starting to wonder if my aunt and uncle were right about magic people."

* * *

Harry had never been to London before. Although Hagrid seemed to know where he was going, he was obviously not used to getting there in an ordinary way. He got stuck in the ticket barrier on the Underground, and complained loudly that the seats were too small and the trains too slow.

"I don't know how the Muggles manage without magic," he said as they climbed a broken-down escalator that led up to a bustling road lined with shops.

"Oh, you'd be surprised, Hagrid," said Harry. "The non-magical world has made some truly remarkable advancement in the fields of science and medicine in just the last hundred years or so. Cars, airplanes, organ transplants, films, computers, the assembly line, antibiotics, microchips, the smoke detector, the atomic bomb and nuclear weapons, the cure for syphilis, radio, household appliances, insulin, plastic, nylon, the transistor, chemotherapy, the polio vaccine, satellites, rockets, sex reassignment surgery…"

* * *

A pale young man made his way forward, very nervously. One of his eyes was twitching.

"Professor Quirrell!" said Hagrid. "Harry, Professor Quirrell will be one of your teachers at Hogwarts."

"P-P-Potter," stammered Professor Quirrell, grasping Harry's hand, "c-can't t-tell you how p-pleased I am to meet you."

"What sort of magic do you teach, Professor Quirrell?"

"D-Defense Against the D-D-Dark Arts," muttered Professor Quirrell, as though he'd rather not think about it. "N-not that you n-need it, eh, P-P-Potter?" He laughed nervously. "You'll be g-getting all your equipment, I suppose? I've g-got to p-pick up a new b-book on vampires, m-myself." He looked terrified at the very thought.

But the others wouldn't let Professor Quirrell keep Harry to himself. It took almost ten minutes to get away from them all. At last, Hagrid managed to make himself heard over the babble.

"Must get on - lots ter buy. Come on, Harry."

Doris Crockford shook Harry's hand one last time, and Hagrid led them through the bar and out into a small, walled courtyard, where there was nothing but a trash can and a few weeds.

Hagrid grinned at Harry.

"Told yeh, didn't I? Told yeh you was famous. Even Professor Quirrell was tremblin' ter meet yeh - mind you, he's usually tremblin'."

"Is he always that nervous?"

"Oh, yeah. Poor bloke. Brilliant mind. He was fine while he was studyin' outta books but then he took a year off ter get some firsthand experience... They say he met vampires in the Black Forest, and there was a nasty bit o' trouble with a hag - never been the same since. Scared of the students, scared of his own subject - now, where's me umbrella?"

"Hagrid, how important is Defense Against the Dark Arts?" said Harry.

"Oh, very important. It's one of your core classes and something that ev'ry witch and wizard should know if they want ter protect themselves."

"Okay, then why is it being taught by a man who's scared of his own shadow?"

"Huh?"

"Oh, come on, Hagrid, a class as important as that should be taught by someone who actually knows what he's doing and not some guy who wouldn't last two seconds against a particularly persnickety butterfly. Come on, either that guy is completely hopeless in a fight or he's putting on a very convincing act. So, tell me, Hagrid, why isn't there a decent Defense professor?"

"Well, no one really lasts more than a year in the job because some say it's cursed."

"Hagrid, I've gotta say, that is probably the lamest excuse ever."

"Wha?"

"Seriously, if there is a curse then couldn't Dumbledore just figure out how to break it since you said he's so powerful? Or, failing that, find someone who _can_ break it? And if there isn't a curse at all then there isn't anything to be afraid of. Really, it's just that simple. Hagrid? Hagrid, are you all right?"

Hagrid was just standing there with his mouth hanging open.

* * *

"Gringotts," said Hagrid.

They had reached a snowy white building that towered over the other little shops. Standing beside its burnished bronze doors, wearing a uniform of scarlet and gold, was -

"Yeah, that's a goblin," said Hagrid quietly as they walked up the white stone steps toward him. The goblin was about a head shorter than Harry. He had a swarthy, clever face, a pointed beard and, Harry noticed, very long fingers and feet. He bowed as they walked inside. Now they were facing a second pair of doors, silver this time, with words engraved upon them:

_Enter, stranger, but take heed_

_Of what awaits the sin of greed,_

_For those who take, but do not earn,_

_Must pay most dearly in their turn._

_So if you seek beneath our floors_

_A treasure that was never yours,_

_Thief, you have been warned, beware_

_Of finding more than treasure there._

"Like I said, yeh'd be mad ter try an' rob it," said Hagrid.

A pair of goblins bowed them through the silver doors and they were in a vast marble hall. About a hundred more goblins were sitting on high stools behind a long counter, scribbling in large ledgers, weighing coins in brass scales, examining precious stones through eyeglasses. There were too many doors to count leading off the hall, and yet more goblins were showing people in and out of these. Hagrid and Harry made for the counter.

"Morning," said Hagrid to a free goblin. "We've come ter take some money outta Mr. Harry Potter's safe."

"You have his key, sir?"

"Got it here somewhere," said Hagrid, and he started emptying his pockets onto the counter, scattering a handful of moldy dog biscuits over the goblin's book of numbers. The goblin wrinkled his nose. Harry watched the goblin on their right weighing a pile of rubies as big as glowing coals.

"Got it," said Hagrid at last, holding up a tiny golden key.

The goblin looked at it closely.

"That seems to be in order, but I do have a question."

"Yeah?" said Hagrid.

"If this is young Mr. Potter's key then why was it in your possession?"

"Oh, Headmaster Dumbledore instructed me to give it to him."

"Yes, yes, I gather that, but how did he come into possession of it? Is the headmaster Mr. Potter's guardian? Because, if he's not, I am curious as to how he was able to get access to a vault in our bank when we have such an incredibly strict policy regarding bank security. If this key was not in Mr. Potter's possession before now, how is it that Headmaster Dumbledore got it and has he removed anything from the vault without the consent of the owner?"

"Excuse me, sir," said Harry curiously. "But you almost make it sound like Dumbledore had done something to prevent me from accessing my money until I had just entered the magical world so that he could get some sort of control over me."

At that moment at Hogwarts, Albus Dumbledore dropped the stack of books he was carrying and began to sweat nervously as he thought: _$#*! It feels like someone's on to me._

* * *

"Gringotts," said Hagrid.

They had reached a snowy white building that towered over the other little shops. Standing beside its burnished bronze doors, wearing a uniform of scarlet and gold, was -

"Yeah, that's a goblin," said Hagrid quietly as they walked up the white stone steps toward him. The goblin was about a head shorter than Harry. He had a swarthy, clever face, a pointed beard and, Harry noticed, very long fingers and feet. He bowed as they walked inside. Now they were facing a second pair of doors, silver this time, with words engraved upon them:

_Enter, stranger, but take heed_

_Of what awaits the sin of greed,_

_For those who take, but do not earn,_

_Must pay most dearly in their turn._

_So if you seek beneath our floors_

_A treasure that was never yours,_

_Thief, you have been warned, beware_

_Of finding more than treasure there._

"Like I said, yeh'd be mad ter try an' rob it," said Hagrid.

A pair of goblins bowed them through the silver doors and they were in a vast marble hall. About a hundred more goblins were sitting on high stools behind a long counter, scribbling in large ledgers, weighing coins in brass scales, examining precious stones through eyeglasses. There were too many doors to count leading off the hall, and yet more goblins were showing people in and out of these. Hagrid and Harry made for the counter.

"Morning," said Hagrid to a free goblin. "We've come ter take some money outta Mr. Harry Potter's safe."

"You have his key, sir?"

"Got it here somewhere," said Hagrid, and he started emptying his pockets onto the counter, scattering a handful of moldy dog biscuits over the goblin's book of numbers. The goblin wrinkled his nose. Harry watched the goblin on their right weighing a pile of rubies as big as glowing coals.

"Got it," said Hagrid at last, holding up a tiny golden key.

The goblin looked at it closely.

"That seems to be in order."

"An' I've also got a letter here from Professor Dumbledore," said Hagrid importantly, throwing out his chest. "It's about the You-Know-What in vault seven hundred and thirteen."

The goblin read the letter carefully.

"Very well," he said, handing it back to Hagrid, "I will have someone take you down to both vaults."

"Oh, before you do that, sir, I have a question or two," said Harry.

"What is it, Mr. Potter?"

"Did my parents leave behind a will? And, if they did, is Gringotts in charge of executing the will?"

"Of course they left a will, child. They were living in a time when people were dying practically every day and they had a young child who would need to be provided for in the possibility of their deaths; so it would be completely ridiculous and stupid for them not to leave a will. If you want to see the will, Gringotts shall provide it to you. If you have any questions about your account, you can always speak with an account manager as it would be completely ridiculous for us not to have such a provision for our clients. If you have any further questions, please speak to someone at customer service."

"Oh, and one other thing," said Harry. "If I really do have an account here, why have I not been receiving bank statements? I'm not sure how things operate in the magical world, but Muggle banks provide monthly or annual statements about the condition of a client's account."

"Do you mean to tell us that you have not received statements from Gringotts?" the goblin asked suspiciously. Harry shook his head. "I must speak with my superior immediately. If you have not received any information from us, then it appears to be a case of mail-tampering."

"Well, I haven't actually received any mail at all from the magical world," Harry explained. "I started to think that was odd when I saw how excited people were to meet me back at the Leaky Cauldron."

"It certainly is unusual, Mr. Potter. I assure you a full investigation will be launched into why you have not been receiving your mail."

* * *

**That's something that has always stumped me and a number of other fanfiction authors. Why is it that, if Harry is so famous, he never received so much as a single letter until he got the one from Hogwarts?**

* * *

Griphook was yet another goblin. Once Hagrid had crammed all the dog biscuits back inside his pockets, he and Harry followed Griphook toward one of the doors leading off the hall.

"What's the You-Know-What in vault seven hundred and thirteen?" Harry asked.

"Can't tell yeh that," said Hagrid mysteriously. "Very secret. Hogwarts business. Dumbledore's trusted me. More'n my job's worth ter tell yeh that."

"If it's so secret, why did you say that, then?" said Harry.

"Huh?"

"Hagrid, not to be nit-picky, but when you tell an eleven-year-old with an insatiable curiosity that something is a secret, he or she is bound to become fascinated by the prospect of it and end up getting involved in some way or another. If you had come up with an excuse like 'oh, the headmaster's just very paranoid about his wallet' or something like that, then that child would be far more likely to just dismiss it as unimportant. Come to think of it, it probably wasn't the best idea for you to bring a curious child with you if you were picking up something top secret. An outside observer might think that someone was setting me up to try and figure out whatever this mysterious object is. But what are the chances of that?"

* * *

Griphook held the door open for them. Harry, who had expected more marble, was surprised. They were in a narrow stone passageway lit with flaming torches. It sloped steeply downward and there were little railway tracks on the floor. Griphook whistled and a small cart came hurtling up the tracks toward them. They climbed in - Hagrid with some difficulty - and were off.

At first they just hurtled through a maze of twisting passages. Harry tried to remember, left, right, right, left, middle fork, right, left, but it was impossible. The rattling cart seemed to know its own way, because Griphook wasn't steering.

Harry's eyes stung as the cold air rushed past them, but he kept them wide open. Once, he thought he saw a burst of fire at the end of a passage and twisted around to see if it was a dragon, but too late - they plunged even deeper, passing an underground lake where huge stalactites and stalagmites grew from the ceiling and floor.

"I never know," Harry called to Hagrid over the noise of the cart, "what's the difference between a stalagmite and a stalactite?"

"Stalagmite's got an 'm' in it," said Hagrid. "An' don' ask me questions just now, I think I'm gonna be sick."

He did look very green, and when the cart stopped at last beside a small door in the passage wall, Hagrid got out and had to lean against the wall to stop his knees from trembling.

Griphook unlocked the door. A lot of green smoke came billowing out, and as it cleared, Harry gasped. Inside were mounds of gold coins. Columns of silver. Heaps of little bronze Knuts.

"All yours," smiled Hagrid.

All Harry's - it was incredible. The Dursleys couldn't have known about this or they'd have had it from him faster than blinking. How often had they complained how much Harry cost them to keep? And all the time there had been a small fortune belonging to him, buried deep under London.

"After all these years," Harry thought aloud. "After all these years of the Dursleys' complaining about how much it cost to look after me when they barely spent so much as a penny on my upkeep, I finally can get away from them."

"Er, what do yeh mean, Harry?" said Hagrid.

"Are you joking? I have a means of escape! Just a handful of what's in here would see me set for months. I don't have to go back to the Dursleys now. I've dreamed of leaving for years but never had the means to support myself, until now. Thank you, God!"

Hagrid and Griphook shuffled back away from the now hysterically happy boy.

* * *

Griphook unlocked the door. A lot of green smoke came billowing out, and as it cleared, Harry gasped. Inside were mounds of gold coins. Columns of silver. Heaps of little bronze Knuts.

"All yours," smiled Hagrid.

All Harry's - it was incredible. The Dursleys couldn't have known about this or they'd have had it from him faster than blinking. How often had they complained how much Harry cost them to keep? And all the time there had been a small fortune belonging to him, buried deep under London.

Hagrid helped Harry pile some of it into a bag. Harry then turned to Griphook.

"Just out of curiosity, is there an easier method to withdraw money from an account?" he asked. "Only, sometimes people need to make big purchases and it's kind of inconvenient to carry around a huge satchel of money in public where it could get stolen. Wouldn't it be more effective to, I don't know, have some sort of enchanted bag connected to an individual's account that will only allow the owner of the vault to withdraw money? It would save the needless time and energy of having to come down here every time a person needs to make a withdrawal, don't you think? Guys?"

Hagrid and the goblin both stared open-mouthed at Harry.

* * *

Griphook unlocked the door. A lot of green smoke came billowing out, and as it cleared, Harry gasped. Inside were mounds of gold coins. Columns of silver. Heaps of little bronze Knuts.

"All yours," smiled Hagrid.

All Harry's - it was incredible. The Dursleys couldn't have known about this or they'd have had it from him faster than blinking. How often had they complained how much Harry cost them to keep? And all the time there had been a small fortune belonging to him, buried deep under London.

Hagrid helped Harry pile some of it into a bag.

"The gold ones are Galleons," he explained. "Seventeen silver Sickles to a Galleon and twenty-nine Knuts to a Sickle, it's easy enough."

"Okay, and what's the exchange rate on these with Muggle money?" said Harry.

"Huh?" said Hagrid.

"Well, surely there must be a set exchange rate."

"There is, Mr. Potter," said Griphook. "But why do you wish to know?"

"Well, I want to exchange some of my money into Muggle money so that I can buy things in the non-magical world." Harry looked at the over-sized cast-offs he was wearing. "Some normal clothes would be a nice change. And it's always a good idea to keep emergency money on hand. It would be completely stupid and reckless of me to not think of an eventuality like if I was, say, on the run for any reason and needed to blend into the non-magical world without arousing suspicion, some non-magical money would be a tremendous help."

"Of course, Mr. Potter," said Griphook. "You may exchange wizarding money for Muggle upstairs in the atrium."

"Thank you."

* * *

**It always struck me as odd that Harry never bothered to have some of his money changed into regular money. I get that he wouldn't want to attract the suspicions of the Dursleys but, come on, he was just being careless.**

* * *

One wild cart ride later they stood blinking in the sunlight outside Gringotts. Harry didn't know where to run first now that he had a bag full of money. He didn't have to know how many Galleons there were to a pound to know that he was holding more money than he'd had in his whole life - more money than even Dudley had ever had.

"Might as well get yer uniform," said Hagrid, nodding toward Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions. "Listen, Harry, would yeh mind if I slipped off fer a pick-me-up in the Leaky Cauldron? I hate them Gringotts carts." He did still look a bit sick, so Harry entered Madam Malkin's shop alone, feeling nervous and not at all worried that his chaperone might be technically abandoning him to get alcohol (Harry decided he wasn't going to question it too much as he was just eleven).

Madam Malkin was a squat, smiling witch dressed all in mauve.

"Hogwarts, dear?" she said, when Harry started to speak. "Got the lot here - another young man being fitted up just now, in fact."

In the back of the shop, a boy with a pale, pointed face was standing on a footstool while a second witch pinned up his long black robes. Madam Malkin stood Harry on a stool next to him slipped a long robe over his head, and began to pin it to the right length.

"Hello," said the boy, "Hogwarts, too?"

"Yes," said Harry.

"My father's next door buying my books and mother's up the street looking at wands," said the boy. He had a bored, drawling voice.

"That's interesting," Harry said. "It's nice that you trust your mother enough to choose such an important magical implement for you. After all, it would probably not be such a good idea if a wand had to be chosen specifically by the one who was going to wield it as part of some strange bond between object and owner. I guess I was just over thinking things when I first got the notion that the wand had to, for lack of a better word, 'choose' its owner rather than the owner, or his mother, choosing it. What did you say your name was?"

Harry blinked as his pale-faced companion was frozen with his mouth hanging open.

* * *

In the back of the shop, a boy with a pale, pointed face was standing on a footstool while a second witch pinned up his long black robes. Madam Malkin stood Harry on a stool next to him slipped a long robe over his head, and began to pin it to the right length.

"Hello," said the boy, "Hogwarts, too?"

"Yes," said Harry.

"My father's next door buying my books and mother's up the street looking at wands," said the boy. He had a bored, drawling voice. "Then I'm going to drag them off to look at racing brooms. I don't see why first years can't have their own. I think I'll bully father into getting me one and I'll smuggle it in somehow."

Harry was strongly reminded of Dudley.

"Have you got your own broom?" the boy went on.

"No," said Harry.

"Play Quidditch at all?"

"No," Harry said again, wondering what on earth Quidditch could be.

"I do - Father says it's a crime if I'm not picked to play for my house, and I must say, I agree. Know what house you'll be in yet?"

"No," said Harry, feeling more stupid by the minute.

"Well, no one really knows until they get there, do they, but I know I'll be in Slytherin, all our family have been - imagine being in Hufflepuff, I think I'd leave, wouldn't you?"

"Mmm," said Harry, wishing he could say something a bit more interesting.

"I say, look at that man!" said the boy suddenly, nodding toward the front window. Hagrid was standing there, grinning at Harry and pointing at two large ice creams to show he couldn't come in.

"That's Hagrid," said Harry, pleased to know something the boy didn't. "He works at Hogwarts."

"Oh," said the boy, "I've heard of him. He's a sort of servant, isn't he?"

"He's the gamekeeper," said Harry. He was liking the boy less and less every second.

"Yes, exactly. I heard he's a sort of savage - lives in a hut on the school grounds and every now and then he gets drunk, tries to do magic, and ends up setting fire to his bed."

"I think he's brilliant," said Harry coldly.

"Do you?" said the boy, with a slight sneer. "Why is he with you? Where are your parents?"

"They're dead," said Harry shortly. He didn't feel much like going into the matter with this boy.

"Oh, sorry," said the other, not sounding sorry at all. "But they were our kind, weren't they?"

"They were a witch and wizard, if that's what you mean."

"I really don't think they should let the other sort in, do you? They're just not the same, they've never been brought up to know our ways. Some of them have never even heard of Hogwarts until they get the letter, imagine. I think they should keep it in the old wizarding families. What's your surname, anyway?"

Before Madam Malkin could interrupt Harry to tell him he was done, Harry decided to speak his mind.

"Look, I don't know who you are, but I don't feel inclined to share any personal information with you," Harry said sharply. "All you have done since I entered this shop was brag about yourself without so much as an introduction. Not even a 'Hello, my name is, so and so, what's yours?' Then you continued to spout off your personal prejudices when it was blatantly obvious that I wasn't paying too much mind to the conversation. Then, you go and insult my chaperone, the first person to actually be sincerely nice to me in ten years, and then make demands about information regarding my family. Information, I might add, that I have little knowledge about. So, thanks but no thanks."

The pale-faced boy stood there in shock and Madam Malkin awkwardly inserted herself into the conversation.

"That's you done, my dear," she said to Harry.

Harry looked puzzled for a moment.

"Wow, that was certainly quick, considering the fact that I came in here after him and we were both being fitted for the same kind of school robes," Harry said. He then shrugged, said "Oh well," and exited the shop.

* * *

Harry was rather quiet as he ate the ice cream Hagrid had bought him (chocolate and raspberry with chopped nuts).

"What's up?" said Hagrid.

"Nothing," Harry lied. They stopped to buy parchment and quills. Harry cheered up a bit when he found a bottle of ink that changed color as you wrote. When they had left the shop, he said, "Hagrid, what's Quidditch?"

"Blimey, Harry, I keep forgettin' how little yeh know - not knowin' about Quidditch!"

"Don't make me feel worse," said Harry. He told Hagrid about the pale boy in Madam Malkin's.

"- and he said people from Muggle families shouldn't even be allowed in-"

"Yer not from a Muggle family."

"I might as well be," Harry protested. "I've already told you, I know absolutely nothing about the magical world. Who knows how badly I'll botch up in the magical world because of my complete lack of experience that those raised in it will be completely accustomed to?"

Hagrid pondered this for a moment.

"Well, Harry, if yer so concerned, why don't I ask Professor McGonagall the send yeh the introductory information tha' Muggle-born students get. After all, it would be ridiculous ter not have somethin' in place ter help those raised in the Muggle world."

"Gee, thanks, Hagrid, that is a very simple solution and will probably save me innumerable amounts of trouble."

* * *

Harry was rather quiet as he ate the ice cream Hagrid had bought him (chocolate and raspberry with chopped nuts).

"What's up?" said Hagrid.

"Nothing," Harry lied. They stopped to buy parchment and quills. Harry cheered up a bit when he found a bottle of ink that changed color as you wrote. When they had left the shop, he said, "Hagrid, what's Quidditch?"

"Blimey, Harry, I keep forgettin' how little yeh know - not knowin' about Quidditch!"

"Don't make me feel worse," said Harry. He told Hagrid about the pale boy in Madam Malkin's.

"- and he said people from Muggle families shouldn't even be allowed in-"

"Yer not from a Muggle family. If he'd known who yeh were - he's grown up knowin' yer name if his parents are wizardin' folk. You saw what everyone in the Leaky Cauldron was like when they saw yeh. Anyway, what does he know about it, some o' the best I ever saw were the only ones with magic in 'em in a long line o' Muggles - look at yer mum! Look what she had fer a sister!"

"So what is Quidditch?"

"It's our sport. Wizard sport. It's like - like football in the Muggle world - everyone follows Quidditch - played up in the air on broomsticks and there's four balls - sorta hard ter explain the rules."

"And what are Slytherin and Hufflepuff?"

"School houses. There's four. Everyone says Hufflepuff are a lot o' duffers, but-"

"But?"

"Hmm? Oh, sorry, lost me train of thought for a mo'. As I was sayin', people often say Hufflepuffs are a lot o' duffers, but that's just because they're the more quiet an' unassumin' bunch at Hogwarts. They are fiercely loyal, hardworkin', and friendly. They're the type who, if you go by House standards, would probably follow their friends into danger just 'cause it's the righ' thing to do."

"Wow, Hufflepuffs sound great," said Harry brightly. "I'm certain they're not the type to spread vicious rumors about someone just because he or she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And I'm certain they also aren't the types to cruelly insult or demine a member of another House when he or she was, say, enrolled in a competition against his or her will just because that person might take the spotlight away from a member of their own House."

* * *

**I have nothing against Hufflepuffs in general; in fact, Pottermore sorted me there and put my mom in Ravenclaw; it's just that, over Harry's time at Hogwarts, Hufflepuff's treatment of Harry has been second only to Slytherin. And, in a way, that kind of makes it worse because Hufflepuffs are supposed to be the nicest House of the bunch; at least you expect the Slytherins to be mean to Harry, but Hufflepuffs?**

* * *

Harry was rather quiet as he ate the ice cream Hagrid had bought him (chocolate and raspberry with chopped nuts).

"What's up?" said Hagrid.

"Nothing," Harry lied. They stopped to buy parchment and quills. Harry cheered up a bit when he found a bottle of ink that changed color as you wrote. When they had left the shop, he said, "Hagrid, what's Quidditch?"

"Blimey, Harry, I keep forgettin' how little yeh know - not knowin' about Quidditch!"

"Don't make me feel worse," said Harry. He told Hagrid about the pale boy in Madam Malkin's.

"- and he said people from Muggle families shouldn't even be allowed in-"

"Yer not from a Muggle family. If he'd known who yeh were - he's grown up knowin' yer name if his parents are wizardin' folk. You saw what everyone in the Leaky Cauldron was like when they saw yeh. Anyway, what does he know about it, some o' the best I ever saw were the only ones with magic in 'em in a long line o' Muggles - look at yer mum! Look what she had fer a sister!"

"So what is Quidditch?"

"It's our sport. Wizard sport. It's like - like football in the Muggle world - everyone follows Quidditch - played up in the air on broomsticks and there's four balls - sorta hard ter explain the rules."

"And what are Slytherin and Hufflepuff?"

"School houses. There's four. Everyone says Hufflepuff are a lot o' duffers, but-"

"I bet I'm in Hufflepuff," said Harry gloomily.

"Better Hufflepuff than Slytherin," said Hagrid darkly. "There's not a single witch or wizard who went bad who wasn't in Slytherin. You-Know-Who was one."

"Wait a second," Harry spoke up. "So, by your logic, the whole House is bad?"

"Well, yeah."

"Okay, putting aside the fact that Vol- that You-Know-Who was one, how is it possible that there's not a single witch or wizard who went bad that wasn't in Slytherin?"

"Well…uhhh…"

"I mean, the children going in there this year are my age and, despite the fact that some of them might be berks like that boy in the shop, I don't think arrogance qualifies as being purely evil. I mean, what exactly is it about Slytherin that makes it evil?"

"Eh, well, yeh get into it by being sneaky, cunning, and ambitious."

"And? How are those bad qualities? I've had to use a fair amount of sneakiness and cunning while dealing with the Dursleys, so does that make me evil? As for ambition, don't most people have goals they want to achieve?"

"Well, it's jus'…they're willin' ter do anythin' to achieve those goals."

"And you know this for certain about every person who ever went there? While I certainly wouldn't do something if it went against my code of ethics, I don't see anything wrong with healthy competitiveness. It's academics, for goodness sake! You're supposed to jockey for position. Honestly, it's almost like whoever sent you to fetch me had intended for you to prejudice me against Slytherins before I even get to Hogwarts."

At that moment, Albus Dumbledore dropped the sandwich he was about to enjoy for lunch and began to sweat nervously. _$#*! There's that feeling like someone's onto me again!_

* * *

They bought Harry's school books in a shop called Flourish and Blotts where the shelves were stacked to the ceiling with books as large as paving stones bound in leather; books the size of postage stamps in covers of silk; books full of peculiar symbols and a few books with nothing in them at all. Even Dudley, who never read anything, would have been wild to get his hands on some of these. Hagrid almost had to drag Harry away from Curses and Countercurses (Bewitch Your Friends and Befuddle Your Enemies with the Latest Revenges: Hair Loss, Jelly-Legs, Tongue-Tying and Much, Much More) by Professor Vindictus Viridian.

"I was trying to find out how to curse Dudley."

"I'm not sayin' that's not a good idea, but yer not ter use magic in the Muggle world except in very special circumstances," said Hagrid. "An' anyway, yeh couldn' work any of them curses yet, yeh'll need a lot more study before yeh get ter that level."

"Okay, then, what about reference materials?" said Harry. "Since I don't know anything about the magical world, it would probably be in my best interest to find some books on magical customs, the Ministry of Magic, what my rights are as a wizard, and anything else that might help me understand the magical world."

* * *

**Quite a few repeats in this chapter, eh?**

* * *

They bought Harry's school books in a shop called Flourish and Blotts where the shelves were stacked to the ceiling with books as large as paving stones bound in leather; books the size of postage stamps in covers of silk; books full of peculiar symbols and a few books with nothing in them at all. Even Dudley, who never read anything, would have been wild to get his hands on some of these. Hagrid almost had to drag Harry away from Curses and Countercurses (Bewitch Your Friends and Befuddle Your Enemies with the Latest Revenges: Hair Loss, Jelly-Legs, Tongue-Tying and Much, Much More) by Professor Vindictus Viridian.

"I was trying to find out how to curse Dudley."

"I'm not sayin' that's not a good idea, but yer not ter use magic in the Muggle world except in very special circumstances," said Hagrid. "An' anyway, yeh couldn' work any of them curses yet, yeh'll need a lot more study before yeh get ter that level."

Hagrid wouldn't let Harry buy a solid gold cauldron, either ("It says pewter on yer list"), but Harry looked at Hagrid incredulously.

"Hagrid, whoever wrote on the list that students need a pewter cauldron is a moron," said Harry. "Pewter contains lead, which is highly toxic and liable to increase health risks to students. Even if the pewter cauldrons here don't contain lead, which I doubt considering how old-fashioned the magical world appears to be, there is still the fact that pewter has a very low melting temperature which would cause the potions made in them to react terribly."

"I never knew tha', Harry," said Hagrid in shock. "I'd best report this ter the school. It won' do any good fer the students to poison themselves or blow each other up."

* * *

Then they visited the Apothecary, which was fascinating enough to make up for its horrible smell, a mixture of bad eggs and rotted cabbages. Barrels of slimy stuff stood on the floor; jars of herbs, dried roots, and bright powders lined the walls; bundles of feathers, strings of fangs, and snarled claws hung from the ceiling. While Hagrid asked the man behind the counter for a supply of some basic potion ingredients for Harry, Harry himself examined silver unicorn horns at twenty-one Galleons each and minuscule, glittery-black beetle eyes (five Knuts a scoop).

Harry was now eagerly looking forward to studying potions and hoped he would like the teacher, because, as many people will tell you, if there is a subject you like that is being taught by a bad teacher then you start to lose your interest in that subject whereas if there is a subject you don't particularly care for that has a good teacher then your liking for that subject will improve.

* * *

A tinkling bell rang somewhere in the depths of the shop as they stepped inside. It was a tiny place, empty except for a single, spindly chair that Hagrid sat on to wait. Harry felt strangely as though he had entered a very strict library; he swallowed a lot of new questions that had just occurred to him and looked instead at the thousands of narrow boxes piled neatly right up to the ceiling. For some reason, the back of his neck prickled. The very dust and silence in here seemed to tingle with some secret magic.

"Good afternoon," said a soft voice. Harry jumped. Hagrid must have jumped, too, because there was a loud crunching noise and he got quickly off the spindly chair.

An old man was standing before them, his wide, pale eyes shining like moons through the gloom of the shop.

"Hello," said Harry awkwardly.

"Ah yes," said the man. "Yes, yes. I thought I'd be seeing you soon. Harry Potter." It wasn't a question. "You have your mother's eyes. It seems only yesterday she was in here herself, buying her first wand. Ten and a quarter inches long, swishy, made of willow. Nice wand for charm work."

Mr. Ollivander moved closer to Harry. Harry wished he would blink. Those silvery eyes were a bit creepy.

"Your father, on the other hand, favored a mahogany wand. Eleven inches. Pliable. A little more power and excellent for transfiguration. Well, I say your father favored it - it's really the wand that chooses the wizard, of course."

Mr. Ollivander had come so close that he and Harry were almost nose to nose. Harry could see himself reflected in those misty eyes.

"And that's where..."

Mr. Ollivander touched the lightning scar on Harry's forehead with a long, white finger.

"Um, excuse me, sir," said Harry. "But I don't feel particularly comfortable with you invading my personal space like this. In fact, I'd imagine most people becoming unsettled by a man they've never met before getting so close to their faces."

Mr. Ollivander backed up a step.

"Oh, yes, my apologies," he said. "Now, back to wands."

* * *

He shook his head and then, to Harry's relief, spotted Hagrid.

"Rubeus! Rubeus Hagrid! How nice to see you again... Oak, sixteen inches, rather bendy, wasn't it?"

"It was, sir, yes," said Hagrid.

"Good wand, that one. But I suppose they snapped it in half when you got expelled?" said Mr. Ollivander, suddenly stern.

"Er - yes, they did, yes," said Hagrid, shuffling his feet. "I've still got the pieces, though," he added brightly.

"But you don't use them?" said Mr. Ollivander sharply.

"Oh, no, sir," said Hagrid quickly. Harry noticed he gripped his pink umbrella very tightly as he spoke.

"Hmmm," said Mr. Ollivander, giving Hagrid a piercing look. "You didn't actually expect me to fall for that, did you? Considering your hasty defensiveness and the way you instinctively gripped that pink umbrella as soon as I inquired if you still used the pieces of your old wand was kind of a dead giveaway."

Hagrid looked suddenly nervous.

"Not to worry," Mr. Ollivander continued with a dismissive wave. "I'm not criticizing you or going to tell the Law Enforcement. I'm sure you have permission from Dumbledore to use magic despite your having been expelled."

"Of course, sir," said Hagrid. "Because, as everyone knows, Albus Dumbledore's word is as good as law."

Harry puzzled over the fact that one man was allowed to have so much power that he could permit someone who had been barred from using magic to do just that.

* * *

"Hmmm," said Mr. Ollivander, giving Hagrid a piercing look. "Well, now - Mr. Potter. Let me see." He pulled a long tape measure with silver markings out of his pocket. "Which is your wand arm?"

"Er - well, I'm right-handed," said Harry.

"Hold out your arm. That's it." He measured Harry from shoulder to finger, then wrist to elbow, shoulder to floor, knee to armpit and round his head. As he measured, he said, "Every Ollivander wand has a core of a powerful magical substance, Mr. Potter. We use unicorn hairs, phoenix tail feathers, and the heartstrings of dragons. No two Ollivander wands are the same, just as no two unicorns, dragons, or phoenixes are quite the same. And of course, you will never get such good results with another wizard's wand.

"Meaning that if a witch or wizard used a wand that wasn't suited to them, it would be a miracle if they can get off more than a few measly sparks. Personally, I think it is criminally negligent to send students off to Hogwarts will ill-suited wands, which happens more frequently than one might think, and there really should be a student fund set aside for those who are financially unable to afford proper school equipment."

Harry and Hagrid blinked several times at the strange wandmaker who then drifted off to find some possible wands for Harry.

* * *

Harry tried. And tried. He had no idea what Mr. Ollivander was waiting for. The pile of tried wands was mounting higher and higher on the spindly chair, but the more wands Mr. Ollivander pulled from the shelves, the happier he seemed to become.

"Tricky customer, eh? Not to worry, we'll find the perfect match here somewhere - I wonder, now - yes, why not - unusual combination - holly and phoenix feather, eleven inches, nice and supple."

Harry took the wand. He felt a sudden warmth in his fingers. He raised the wand above his head, brought it swishing down through the dusty air and a stream of red and gold sparks shot from the end like a firework, throwing dancing spots of light on to the walls. Hagrid whooped and clapped and Mr. Ollivander cried, "Oh, bravo! Yes, indeed, oh, very good. Well, well, well... how curious... how very curious..."

He put Harry's wand back into its box and wrapped it in brown paper, still muttering, "Curious... curious...

"Sorry," said Harry, "but what's curious?"

Mr. Ollivander fixed Harry with his pale stare.

"I remember every wand I've ever sold, Mr. Potter. Every single wand. It so happens that the phoenix whose tail feather is in your wand, gave another feather - just one other. It is very curious indeed that you should be destined for this wand when its brother - why, its brother gave you that scar."

Harry swallowed.

"Yes, thirteen-and-a-half inches. Yew. Curious indeed how these things happen. The wand chooses the wizard, remember... I think we must expect great things from you, Mr. Potter... After all, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did great things - terrible, yes, but great."

"Wait," said Harry, "if you sold Vol-, sorry, You-Know-Who's wand to him, is his real name…you know?"

"Of course not. Seeing as how I remember every individual who comes into my store to purchase a wand, I remember, quite clearly, that You-Know-Who's real name is Tom Riddle. So, if you should ever happen upon something that belonged to Tom Riddle, you should be incredibly careful."

"Gee, Mr. Ollivander, thanks for the warning. Who knows how that information might be helpful in the future?"

* * *

**People always tell off Dumbledore for not revealing that Tom Riddle was Voldemort, but what they forget is that Ollivander knew who he was, too. In short, Dumbledore can't entirely shoulder the blame in that regard.**

* * *

The late afternoon sun hung low in the sky as Harry and Hagrid made their way back down Diagon Alley, back through the wall, back through the Leaky Cauldron, now empty. Harry didn't speak at all as they walked down the road; he didn't even notice how much people were gawking at them on the Underground, laden as they were with all their funny-shaped packages, with the snowy owl asleep in its cage on Harry's lap. Up another escalator, out into Paddington station; Harry only realized where they were when Hagrid tapped him on the shoulder.

"Got time fer a bite to eat before yer train leaves," he said.

He bought Harry a hamburger and they sat down on plastic seats to eat them. Harry kept looking around. Everything looked so strange, somehow.

"You all right, Harry? Yer very quiet," said Hagrid.

Harry wasn't sure he could explain. He'd just had the best birthday of his life - and yet - he chewed his hamburger, trying to find the words.

"Everyone thinks I'm special," he said at last. "All those people in the Leaky Cauldron, Professor Quirrell, Mr. Ollivander... but I don't know anything about magic at all. How can they expect great things? I'm famous and I can't even remember what I'm famous for. I don't know what happened when Vol-, sorry - I mean, the night my parents died."

Hagrid leaned across the table. Behind the wild beard and eyebrows he wore a very kind smile.

"Don' you worry, Harry. You'll learn fast enough. Everyone starts at the beginning at Hogwarts, you'll be just fine. Just be yerself. I know it's hard. Yeh've been singled out, an' that's always hard. But yeh'll have a great time at Hogwarts - I did - still do, 'smatter of fact."

"Yeah, but how will I know if people like me for being me or for being the 'Boy-Who-Lived'?" Harry retorted. "Hagrid, you don't understand what it's going to be like for me. All my life I've been used to trying to stay as far away from attention as I could so that I wouldn't get in trouble with the Dursleys; now, I'm being plunged headfirst into a world where I am going to be constantly under surveillance. I know nothing about the magical world and even you, you have to admit, expected me to know about even commonplace things in the magical world. I don't even know what my parents were like or if they may have had enemies who will come after me out of spite or even if I will be judged by how my parents acted when they were alive.

"Face it, Hagrid; my life is not going to be easy."

"Well, Harry, if you're so worried about how people see yeh, just study and work hard to make a good firs' impression," said Hagrid simply. "Another thing yeh should do is get around and meet other students, regardless of what House they're in. The more people what knows the real Harry Potter, the less likely folks'll believe what's written in the press abou' yeh."

"Wow, Hagrid, that's a very simple solution and easily carried out. Seeing as how the Dursleys hate me and clearly show favoritism towards Dudley, it stands to reason that I was forced to hold myself back in school; therefore, I should jump at the chance to express my newfound freedom through intense study. And, seeing as how I grew up without friends, it would only be logical that I'd want to meet as many new people as possible instead of limiting myself to a very, very small group of one or two friends and several acquaintances."

* * *

Hagrid helped Harry on to the train that would take him back to the Dursleys, then handed him an envelope.

"Yer ticket fer Hogwarts," he said. "First o' September - King's Cross - it's all on yer ticket. Any problems with the Dursleys, send me a letter with yer owl, she'll know where to find me... See yeh soon, Harry."

The train pulled out of the station. Harry wanted to watch Hagrid until he was out of sight; he rose in his seat and pressed his nose against the window, but he blinked and Hagrid had gone.

Harry then inspected the ticket and saw a huge problem.

"But, there's no such thing as a platform nine and three-quarters," Harry thought aloud. "It must be hidden somehow, but Hagrid clearly forgot to tell me how to get to it. Oh, if only there was a way I could send a message to Hagrid or a school authority like the Deputy Headmistress." Harry looked forlornly at his owl. "If only I had some method of magical communication like an apex predator with wings who can carry letters in her talons. Too bad I don't have one of those."

The snowy owl gave her best impression of a frustrated sigh. Looks like her owner was going to be one of _those_ wizards.


	7. Platform Nine and Three-Quarters

What Should Have Happened in Harry Potter

**Just a quick warning, I've had some people saying that they can't wait to see me tear into Ron; however, I would just like to say that I am also going to tear into Hermione a bit. Sorry if that offends you, but some of Hermione's actions in this chapter make her come across as really kind of rude. Don't worry, I'll tear into everyone (Dumbledore especially) at some point; even Harry's going to get a whomping, though that will mostly come in book five when he acts like a jerk.**

**Oh, also, I got this one really obnoxious comment that I had to remove from someone known only as "Your Sister." The jerk made some scathing remarks about my story and threatened to tell "mom" about me "wasting time on this website instead of doing homework." If that jerk is reading this now, let me tell you this; you are not my sister, I do not have a (living) sister, I am not intimidated by your childish and vitriolic statements, and if you dislike my story so much then don't read it and don't flame an innocent fanfiction author's story.**

**I don't own Harry Potter.**

The Journey From Platform Nine and Three-Quarters

Harry's last month with the Dursleys wasn't fun. Of course, that is kind of a redundant statement as life with the Dursleys, in general, wasn't fun and it doesn't really make sense to state that the last month before Harry finally got to leave wasn't fun. Even though the Dursleys were, for the most part, ignoring Harry's existence, it was clearly a vast improvement from them shouting at him to do the chores or denying him food or locking him in the cupboard.

_I don't know why I got the notion that this would be depressing_, Harry thought to himself. _Considering the fact that I can't stand the Dursleys, having them leave me alone is probably the best thing to happen to me since discovering I'm a wizard._

* * *

Harry's last month with the Dursleys wasn't fun. True, Dudley was now so scared of Harry he wouldn't stay in the same room, while Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon didn't shut Harry in his cupboard, force him to do anything, or shout at him - in fact, they didn't speak to him at all. Half terrified, half furious, they acted as though any chair with Harry in it were empty. Although this was an improvement in many ways, it did become a bit depressing after a while.

Harry kept to his room, with his new owl for company. He had decided to call her Hedwig, a name he had found in A History of Magic. His school books were very interesting. He lay on his bed reading late into the night, which means that Harry, despite any faulty studying habits he might develop later on, did, in fact, have a desire to learn and put a great deal of effort into his work. Purporting that Harry had no interest in academics is false, he was not in any way stupid or lazy, but was simply stifled all his life by expectations of mediocrity.

* * *

On the last day of August he thought he'd better speak to his aunt and uncle about getting to King's Cross station the next day, so he went down to the living room where they were watching a quiz show on television. He cleared his throat to let them know he was there, and Dudley screamed and ran from the room.

"Er - Uncle Vernon?"

Uncle Vernon grunted to show he was listening.

"Er - I need to be at King's Cross tomorrow to - to go to Hogwarts."

Uncle Vernon grunted again.

"Would it be all right if you gave me a lift?"

Grunt. Harry supposed that meant yes.

"Thank you."

He was about to go back upstairs when Uncle Vernon actually spoke.

"Funny way to get to a wizards' school, the train. Magic carpets all got punctures, have they?"

Harry didn't say anything.

"Where is this school, anyway?"

"I don't know," said Harry, realizing this for the first time. "Which is odd, because one would think I'd have acquired some information about the school in order to be better prepared for what I'm about to experience; like a textbook called 'Hogwarts: A History' or something like that." Harry shook himself. "Oh well, never mind. I've just got to take the train from platform nine and three-quarters."

His aunt and uncle stared.

* * *

"Platform what?"

"Nine and three-quarters."

"Don't talk rubbish," said Uncle Vernon. "There is no platform nine and three-quarters."

"It's on my ticket."

"Barking," said Uncle Vernon, "howling mad, the lot of them. You'll see. You just wait. All right, we'll take you to King's Cross. We're going up to London tomorrow anyway, or I wouldn't bother."

"Why are you going to London?" Harry asked, trying to keep things friendly.

"Taking Dudley to the hospital," growled Uncle Vernon. "Got to have that ruddy tail removed before he goes to Smeltings. I would think that much would be obvious. If that blasted giant hadn't cursed my poor son, we wouldn't have to go to the hospital and answer all sorts of awkward questions. I mean, really, how are we expected to explain how Dudley suddenly sprouted a pig's tail?"

Harry wondered if this might jeopardize that Statute of Secrecy that Hagrid had mentioned.

* * *

They reached King's Cross at half past ten. Uncle Vernon dumped Harry's trunk onto a cart and wheeled it into the station for him. Harry thought this was strangely kind until Uncle Vernon stopped dead, facing the platforms with a nasty grin on his face.

"Well, there you are, boy. Platform nine - platform ten. Your platform should be somewhere in the middle, but they don't seem to have built it yet, do they?"

He was quite right, of course. There was a big plastic number nine over one platform and a big plastic number ten over the one next to it, and in the middle, nothing at all.

Aunt Petunia decided she'd better intervene.

"Honestly, boy, it's not rocket science," she said impatiently. "Just go straight through the barrier separating the two platforms and you'll get there, I saw my sister do it with depressing regularity so I know what I'm talking about."

Vernon looked at Petunia with an expression of deep betrayal as Harry set off.

"Petunia, why on earth did you tell the boy what to do?" he demanded.

"Because, Vernon, if the boy didn't show up at that dratted school, we would be held accountable and then either the freaks or a policeman would show up at our house wanting to know why we abandoned the boy at the train station. I don't know about you, but I have no intention of being either turned into a toad or sent to prison."

* * *

Harry's mouth went rather dry. What on earth was he going to do? He was starting to attract a lot of funny looks, because of Hedwig. He'd have to ask someone.

He stopped a passing guard, but didn't dare mention platform nine and three-quarters. The guard had never heard of Hogwarts and when Harry couldn't even tell him what part of the country it was in, he started to get annoyed, as though Harry was being stupid on purpose. Getting desperate, Harry asked for the train that left at eleven o'clock, but the guard said there wasn't one. In the end the guard strode away, muttering about time wasters. Harry was now trying hard not to panic. According to the large clock over the arrivals board, he had ten minutes left to get on the train to Hogwarts and he had no idea how to do it; he was stranded in the middle of a station with a trunk he could hardly lift, a pocket full of wizard money, and a large owl.

Hagrid must have forgotten to tell him something you had to do, like tapping the third brick on the left to get into Diagon Alley. He wondered if he should get out his wand and start tapping the ticket inspector's stand between platforms nine and ten.

Harry felt that this was incredibly ridiculous and poorly-planned. One would've thought that Hogwarts would have someone on guard outside the platform to guide the Muggle-raised students to where they are supposed to be. All it would take was one person and it would probably help a good deal of students who had no idea what they were doing.

* * *

At that moment a group of people passed just behind him and he caught a few words of what they were saying.

"- packed with Muggles, of course-"

Harry swung round. The speaker was a plump woman who was talking to four boys, all with flaming red hair. Each of them was pushing a trunk like Harry's in front of him - and they had an owl.

Heart hammering, Harry pushed his cart after them. They stopped and so did he, just near enough to hear what they were saying.

"Now, what's the platform number?" said the boys' mother.

"Nine and three-quarters!" piped a small girl, also red-headed, who was holding her hand, "Mom, can't I go..."

"You're not old enough, Ginny, now be quiet. All right, Percy, you go first."

What looked like the oldest boy marched toward platforms nine and ten. Harry watched, careful not to blink in case he missed it - but just as the boy reached the dividing barrier between the two platforms, a large crowd of tourists came swarming in front of him and by the time the last backpack had cleared away, the boy had vanished.

"Fred, you next," the plump woman said.

"I'm not Fred, I'm George," said the boy. "Honestly, woman, you call yourself our mother? Can't you tell I'm George?"

"Sorry, George, dear."

"Only joking, I am Fred," said the boy, and off he went. His twin called after him to hurry up, and he must have done so, because a second later, he had gone - but how had he done it?

Now the third brother was walking briskly toward the barrier he was almost there - and then, quite suddenly, he wasn't anywhere.

There was nothing else for it.

"Excuse me," Harry said to the plump woman.

"Hello, dear," she said. "First time at Hogwarts? Ron's new, too."

She pointed at the last and youngest of her sons. He was tall, thin, and gangling, with freckles, big hands and feet, and a long nose.

"Yes," said Harry. "The thing is -"

"You don't know how to get onto the platform?" the woman said kindly. "Not to worry, dear. You just…"

"Oh, well, there is that, but what I was really wondering was why you were shouting about Muggles in a crowded station," Harry said.

"I beg your pardon, dear?" said the woman confused.

"Well, it's just, isn't that kind of a risk to the whole Secrecy thing? I mean, you weren't exactly being quiet about it, since I could hear you fairly clearly. And, seeing as how non-magical people would think it's odd that anyone owns an owl, I myself attracted a fair bit of attention for that, they would also become suspicious about someone practically shouting about 'Muggles' and that would put the whole Secrecy thing at risk. Ma'am? Are you all right?"

The woman was frozen and simply stood there with her mouth hanging open. Harry looked at the children and saw that they were the same way.

* * *

**Now for a repeat scene.**

* * *

At that moment a group of people passed just behind him and he caught a few words of what they were saying.

"- packed with Muggles, of course-"

Harry swung round. The speaker was a plump woman who was talking to four boys, all with flaming red hair. Each of them was pushing a trunk like Harry's in front of him - and they had an owl.

Heart hammering, Harry pushed his cart after them. They stopped and so did he, just near enough to hear what they were saying.

"Now, what's the platform number?" said the boys' mother.

"Nine and three-quarters!" piped a small girl, also red-headed, who was holding her hand, "Mom, can't I go..."

"You're not old enough, Ginny, now be quiet. All right, Percy, you go first."

What looked like the oldest boy marched toward platforms nine and ten. Harry watched, careful not to blink in case he missed it - but just as the boy reached the dividing barrier between the two platforms, a large crowd of tourists came swarming in front of him and by the time the last backpack had cleared away, the boy had vanished.

"Fred, you next," the plump woman said.

"I'm not Fred, I'm George," said the boy. "Honestly, woman, you call yourself our mother? Can't you tell I'm George?"

"Sorry, George, dear."

"Only joking, I am Fred," said the boy, and off he went. His twin called after him to hurry up, and he must have done so, because a second later, he had gone - but how had he done it?

Now the third brother was walking briskly toward the barrier he was almost there - and then, quite suddenly, he wasn't anywhere.

There was nothing else for it.

The boys had obviously run into the wall which was clearly some kind of magical barrier that could be entered if you just went straight towards it. Harry felt this clearly made sense in regards to the train being hidden, though how they hid the platform in the middle of the station was something that couldn't be explained rationally, and it also explained why the platform had such a bizarre number. What Harry couldn't understand was how stupid the idea was; after all, if a passerby happened to lean against the wall, then they would likely fall through it and discover the secret. And, if the wall was enchanted to prevent non-magicals from passing through, then wizards were horrible people indeed because it meant that non-magical families were unable to see their children off at the station which was blatantly unfair.

Harry was starting to have some reservations about the magical world.

* * *

Harry pressed on through the crowd until he found an empty compartment near the end of the train. He put Hedwig inside first and then started to shove and heave his trunk toward the train door. He tried to lift it up the steps but could hardly raise one end and twice he dropped it painfully on his foot.

"Want a hand?" It was one of the red-haired twins he'd followed through the barrier.

"Yes, please," Harry panted.

"Oi, Fred! C'mere and help!"

With the twins' help, Harry's trunk was at last tucked away in a corner of the compartment.

"Thanks," said Harry, pushing his sweaty hair out of his eyes.

"What's that?" said one of the twins suddenly, pointing at Harry's lightning scar.

"Blimey," said the other twin. "Are you - ?"

"He is," said the first twin. "Aren't you?" he added to Harry.

"What?" said Harry.

"Harry Potter," chorused the twins.

Harry was startled for a moment before remembering that he was famous. Well, no time like the present to start making new friends.

"Yes, my name is Harry Potter," he said patiently. "I am a first year student and I much appreciate your help. Since you know who I am, could you be so kind as to introduce yourselves?"

Fred and George stared at Harry, bewildered for a moment, before they each shook his hand.

"Fred and George Weasley," said Fred. "Third year students and Hogwarts' resident pranksters."

"At your service," George added.

"Well, if you're pranksters then I'll definitely try and stay in your good books," said Harry. After all, if these two were good enough at pranking, they could be very useful allies if he ever needed to get revenge or even if he wanted to experiment with pranking himself.

* * *

**I always though Harry should've had more interaction with the twins. I mean, he's a Marauder Legacy, after all. As a matter of personal opinion, I think the twins would've been better as best friends for Harry than Ron (but that's just me, I guess).**

* * *

The door of the compartment slid open and the youngest redheaded boy came in.

"Anyone sitting there?" he asked, pointing at the seat opposite Harry. "Everywhere else is full."

Harry seriously doubted that the other compartments were full. The train looked big enough that it could accommodate everyone comfortably; and Harry also considered the notion that a train to a _magical_ school would have some sort of enchantments to ensure that a compartment could expand as more people entered it, as it seemed like a rational explanation. Also, when Harry had double-checked information about Hogwarts, he learned that the school was equipped to hold about 1000 students (therefore, the train would do likewise) and further research had revealed that Harry's own year group contained 45 students in total; if one took that to be the average for all seven year groups…let's just say, Harry doubted that space was the boy's real reason. In fact, Harry would've bet that the only reason the newcomer was in here at all was to meet Harry Potter, the famous Boy-Who-Lived.

Nevertheless, Harry didn't want to come across as rude and allowed the boy to join him.

* * *

**I can't have been the only person who thought Ron's only interest in sitting with Harry was to make friends with the Boy-Who-Lived. **

**How many here know what fridge brilliance is? That's when you get this niggling feeling that something about a story or film doesn't make sense but you don't realize it until you are doing some random activity like rifling through your fridge in search of a snack, when realization hits you.**

**Rowling really was good at this. An example is the number of students attending Hogwarts is an indication of just how much damage was done to the wizarding world by Voldemort. Hogwarts is equipped to hold 1000 students, and yet there are only 45 confirmed students in Harry's year (including Harry himself). If you take that to be the average, you're looking at about 315 students in the entire school.**

**So, by that account, Ron's little "everywhere else is full" comment doesn't fly.**

* * *

"Bye," said Harry and Ron. The twins slid the compartment door shut behind them.

"Are you really Harry Potter?" Ron blurted out.

Harry nodded.

"Oh - well, I thought it might be one of Fred and George's jokes," said Ron. "And have you really got - you know..."

He pointed at Harry's forehead.

Harry was not amused and scowled back at the boy.

"You mean do I really have a scar on my forehead that serves as a reminder of when my parents were viciously murdered by a madman?" Harry replied. "Yes. I do have a scar as a result of whatever happened, but did it perhaps cross your mind that I might not want to talk about something so personal or are you just devoid of basic manners?"

Ron looked put-out, he was only asking about the symbol that had marked out Harry Potter as famous; what was his problem?

Harry seemed to read the other boy's expression because he continued.

"If you had grown up without having even the faintest idea of who your parents were and you found out that they had been murdered and some mark had been made on you that symbolized that, would you want random strangers pointing and poking at it, reminding you of the fact?"

That's when Ron realized exactly how he had offended the other boy and turned a bright red in embarrassment.

"Yeah, I thought not," Harry concluded.

* * *

"Are all your family wizards?" asked Harry, who found Ron just as interesting as Ron found him.

"Er - Yes, I think so," said Ron. "I think Mum's got a second cousin who's an accountant, but we never talk about him."

"Why is that?" asked Harry.

"Well, he doesn't like us, at least that's what Mum said, he went into a Muggle profession because he was a Squib, a non-magical born to a magical family, and couldn't hold down a job in the magical world."

"So, what, your family just sort of shunted him away because he didn't have magic?" Harry said, trying not to sound accusatory. "Because that's how it sounds. 'He works in a Muggle profession and we never talk about him.' That sounds strangely similar to how I was treated by my relatives because I _have_ magic."

Ron went quiet, not wanting to have to hear anymore analytical talk from Harry who was reading far too much into the subject for Ron's liking.

* * *

**And repeat…**

* * *

"Are all your family wizards?" asked Harry, who found Ron just as interesting as Ron found him.

"Er - Yes, I think so," said Ron. "I think Mom's got a second cousin who's an accountant, but we never talk about him."

"So you must know loads of magic already."

The Weasleys were clearly one of those old wizarding families the pale boy in Diagon Alley had talked about.

"I heard you went to live with Muggles," said Ron. "What are they like?"

"Horrible - well, not all of them. My aunt and uncle and cousin are, though. Wish I'd had three wizard brothers."

"Five," said Ron. For some reason, he was looking gloomy. "I'm the sixth in our family to go to Hogwarts. You could say I've got a lot to live up to. Bill and Charlie have already left - Bill was head boy and Charlie was captain of Quidditch. Now Percy's a prefect. Fred and George mess around a lot, but they still get really good marks and everyone thinks they're really funny. Everyone expects me to do as well as the others, but if I do, it's no big deal, because they did it first. You never get anything new, either, with five brothers. I've got Bill's old robes, Charlie's old wand, and Percy's old rat."

"Wait a second," said Harry. "You say you have five older brothers, two of whom have already graduated, right?"

"Right," said Ron, confused.

"And your parents both went to Hogwarts, too, right?"

"Yeah, that's right."

"Then why on earth did your mother ask your little sister about where the platform was if she had already been there numerous times in the past?"

"Well, uh, you see…the thing is…"

"You know, if I didn't know any better, I'd almost think someone had set it up for me to meet you and your family. Although it would have taken a huge gamble on me arriving at just before the train left and not knowing how to get onto the platform."

Ron didn't speak, but his eyes kept shifting uneasily.

* * *

**Rinse and repeat…**

* * *

"Are all your family wizards?" asked Harry, who found Ron just as interesting as Ron found him.

"Er - Yes, I think so," said Ron. "I think Mum's got a second cousin who's an accountant, but we never talk about him."

"So you must know loads of magic already."

The Weasleys were clearly one of those old wizarding families the pale boy in Diagon Alley had talked about.

"I heard you went to live with Muggles," said Ron. "What are they like?"

"Horrible - well, not all of them. My aunt and uncle and cousin are, though. Wish I'd had three wizard brothers."

"Five," said Ron. For some reason, he was looking gloomy. "I'm the sixth in our family to go to Hogwarts. You could say I've got a lot to live up to. Bill and Charlie have already left - Bill was head boy and Charlie was captain of Quidditch. Now Percy's a prefect. Fred and George mess around a lot, but they still get really good marks and everyone thinks they're really funny. Everyone expects me to do as well as the others, but if I do, it's no big deal, because they did it first. You never get anything new, either, with five brothers. I've got Bill's old robes, Charlie's old wand, and Percy's old rat."

Ron reached inside his jacket and pulled out a fat gray rat, which was asleep.

"His name's Scabbers and he's useless, he hardly ever wakes up. Percy got an owl from my dad for being made a prefect, but they couldn't aff - I mean, I got Scabbers instead."

"Wait a second," said Harry. "There's something that doesn't make sense to me. I happened to overhear a snippet of your conversation with you family right before you got on the train and happened to hear that your brother-Percy was it?-had already received new robes for becoming a prefect. It almost sounds like your parents were showing favoritism. I mean, they sent you off to school with a wand you aren't matched up with and Mr. Ollivander told me that you can't get decent results with another person's wand. Besides that, why on earth should your family have to pay for the school supplies when the education seems to be compulsory? At most Muggle schools, they provide you with the texts and materials you need and even at more elite schools they tend to have financial aid for students on scholarships."

Ron just stared at Harry, looking for all the world like his brain had stopped working.

* * *

Harry didn't think there was anything wrong with not being able to afford an owl. After all, he'd never had any money in his life until a month ago, and he told Ron so, all about having to wear Dudley's old clothes and never getting proper birthday presents. This seemed to cheer Ron up.

"... and until Hagrid told me, I didn't know anything about being a wizard or about my parents or Voldemort-"

Ron gasped.

"What?" said Harry.

"You said You-Know-Who's name!" said Ron, sounding both shocked and impressed. "I'd have thought you, of all people-"

Harry rolled his eyes.

"It is completely ridiculous to be afraid of a name," Harry stated bluntly. "It's not as though Voldemort can hear you and if he could then you would have much bigger problems to deal with. Being afraid of something as simple as a name is also stupid because it gives that individual a power over you and forces you to respect them, respect that that person has most certainly not earned. Yes, what Voldemort did in the past was awful but there's no point in shivering every time someone says the name and it gets horribly confusing with all the You-Know-Who nonsense."

Ron just opened and closed his mouth at Harry a few times.

* * *

Harry unwrapped his Chocolate Frog and picked up the card. It showed a man's face. He wore half-moon glasses, had a long, crooked nose, and flowing silver hair, beard, and mustache. Underneath the picture was the name Albus Dumbledore.

"So this is Dumbledore!" said Harry.

"Don't tell me you'd never heard of Dumbledore!" said Ron.

"Oh, no, I've heard of him," said Harry. "He was the one who dumped me on my relatives' doorstep when I was a baby and condemned me to ten years of abject misery. I just didn't know what he looked like. Now that I do, I know who to go after for a bit of justified revenge."

"Wha…? But…but he's Dumbledore!"

"Yeah, and he's got a lot to answer for. Like, for instance, why he never bothered to check on me after I was placed with the Dursleys. Just a quick visit every now and then would've made a world of difference in how I was treated and I would probably not have spent ten years living in a cupboard under the stairs. If he's as good at running a school as he is at looking after orphans, then I think I should seriously consider moving to Australia."

Ron suddenly wasn't feeling so hungry anymore.

* * *

**Here's another way this could've gone.**

* * *

Harry unwrapped his Chocolate Frog and picked up the card. It showed a man's face. He wore half-moon glasses, had a long, crooked nose, and flowing silver hair, beard, and mustache. Underneath the picture was the name Albus Dumbledore.

"So this is Dumbledore!" said Harry.

"Don't tell me you'd never heard of Dumbledore!" said Ron. "Can I have a frog? I might get Agrippa - thanks-"

Harry turned over his card and read:

_ALBUS DUMBLEDORE_

CURRENTLY HEADMASTER OF HOGWARTS

_Considered by many the greatest wizard of modern times, Dumbledore is particularly famous for his defeat of the dark wizard Grindelwald in 1945, for the discovery of the twelve uses of dragon's blood, and his work on alchemy with his partner, Nicolas Flamel. Professor Dumbledore enjoys chamber music and tenpin bowling._

"Well, our headmaster has certainly done a lot," said Harry. "I mean, he's also got a couple of distinguished titles like 'Supreme Mugwump,' whatever that is, and Chief Warlock and Grand Sorcerer. I bet all that power and influence hasn't done anything to corrupt him at all, despite the fact that everyone likely tells him that he can do no wrong and no one ever says 'no' to him. I'm also sure all these important titles will play a significant role in years to come; I mean, even if they are just honorary, there must be some basis for them that will be explained at a later date."

"Come on, Harry," Ron chuckled, "this is the real world. If we were in, say, a fantasy novel, then it makes sense for all of Dumbledore's high-ranking positions to be brought up at an important point. I mean, it would be really dumb of the author to create all those titles for Dumbledore only for him to never use them at any point in the book or book series."

The two boys laughed.

* * *

The countryside now flying past the window was becoming wilder. The neat fields had gone. Now there were woods, twisting rivers, and dark green hills.

There was a knock on the door of their compartment and the round-faced boy Harry had passed on platform nine and three-quarters came in. He looked tearful.

"Sorry," he said, "but have you seen a toad at all?"

When they shook their heads, he wailed, "I've lost him! He keeps getting away from me!"

"He'll turn up," said Harry. "Oh, have you thought about asking one of the older students if there is a charm or something that can summon him? I'm sure a prefect would be more than happy to help you."

"Wow, that's actually a really good idea," said the boy. "Considering the fact that I'm magically-raised, I should at least know that there is a spell that can be used to summon things. Thanks for reminding me."

* * *

The countryside now flying past the window was becoming wilder. The neat fields had gone. Now there were woods, twisting rivers, and dark green hills.

There was a knock on the door of their compartment and the round-faced boy Harry had passed on platform nine and three-quarters came in. He looked tearful.

"Sorry," he said, "but have you seen a toad at all?"

When they shook their heads, he wailed, "I've lost him! He keeps getting away from me!"

"He'll turn up," said Harry.

"Yes," said the boy miserably. "Well, if you see him..."

He left.

"Don't know why he's so bothered," said Ron. "If I'd brought a toad I'd lose it as quick as I could. Mind you, I brought Scabbers, so I can't talk."

The rat was still snoozing on Ron's lap.

"Wait a second," said Harry. "I thought the list said we're only allowed to bring and owl, a cat, or a toad. It never said anything about rats."

"You know, I've been wondering that myself," said Ron. "I mean, Percy had him at school for four years and was never told off for having a pet not mentioned on the list. Weird, huh?"

* * *

The countryside now flying past the window was becoming wilder. The neat fields had gone. Now there were woods, twisting rivers, and dark green hills.

There was a knock on the door of their compartment and the round-faced boy Harry had passed on platform nine and three-quarters came in. He looked tearful.

"Sorry," he said, "but have you seen a toad at all?"

When they shook their heads, he wailed, "I've lost him! He keeps getting away from me!"

"He'll turn up," said Harry.

"Yes," said the boy miserably. "Well, if you see him..."

He left.

"Don't know why he's so bothered," said Ron. "If I'd brought a toad I'd lose it as quick as I could. Mind you, I brought Scabbers, so I can't talk."

"Why exactly is there anything wrong with having a pet toad?" said Harry. "I mean, Hagrid told me that toads went out of fashion, but why should that matter if a person likes his or her pet? I mean, isn't that extremely superficial? A lot of non-magical people just have a cat or dog for a pet, but a number also like having unusual creatures like snakes, turtles, toads, and even spiders on occasion."

Ron blanched at the mention of the word 'spiders.'

"So, tell me, Ron, why exactly are toads considered bad pets?"

Ron just shrugged and resumed eating.

* * *

He had just raised his wand when the compartment door slid open again. The toadless boy was back, but this time he had a girl with him. She was already wearing her new Hogwarts robes.

"Has anyone seen a toad? Neville's lost one," she said. She had a bossy sort of voice, lots of bushy brown hair, and rather large front teeth.

"Wait a second," said Harry. "We literally _just_ told him that it wasn't in here, so why are you here? I mean, he's standing right beside you so he could easily have told you that he already asked us. So, really, why are you in here?"

The girl looked puzzled for a moment then turned to the toadless boy.

"Neville, why _didn't_ you tell me that you already asked here?" she said.

The boy blinked a few times.

"I have no idea," he said. "It's almost like some sort of higher force prevented me from saying so in order for us to have an excuse to stop by and talk to these two. I mean, if it had just been you then it would make sense as you weren't with me when I checked in here, but I am with you so it's like there's something that stopped me from stopping you from opening the door."

Everyone exchanged looks.

"We will never speak of this again," said Ron.

* * *

**Yeah, that was something that was bugging me. And now…**

* * *

He had just raised his wand when the compartment door slid open again. The toadless boy was back, but this time he had a girl with him. She was already wearing her new Hogwarts robes.

"Has anyone seen a toad? Neville's lost one," she said. She had a bossy sort of voice, lots of bushy brown hair, and rather large front teeth.

"We've already told him we haven't seen it," said Ron, but the girl wasn't listening, she was looking at the wand in his hand.

"Oh, are you doing magic? Let's see it, then."

She sat down. Ron looked taken aback.

"Er - all right."

He cleared his throat.

"Sunshine, daisies, butter mellow,

Turn this stupid, fat rat yellow."

He waved his wand, but nothing happened. Scabbers stayed gray and fast asleep.

"Are you sure that's a real spell?" said the girl. "Well, it's not very good, is it? I've tried a few simple spells just for practice and it's all worked for me. Nobody in my family's magic at all, it was ever such a surprise when I got my letter, but I was ever so pleased, of course, I mean, it's the very best school of witchcraft there is, I've heard - I've learned all our course books by heart, of course, I just hope it will be enough - I'm Hermione Granger, by the way, who are you?"

She said all this very fast.

"Okay, just hold it right there," said Harry. "Have you ever heard of such a thing as manners?"

The girl was about to protest but Harry cut her off.

"No, seriously, you just barge into our compartment which your friend here already checked for his toad, and when we tell you we don't have it you decide to intrude upon our conversation by basically demanding Ron here show you the spell he was going to do. Then, when the spell doesn't work, which could be because of his faulty wand or just because it was a joke by his brother, you make fun of him for it.

"Then, you start boasting about your own magical experience in a way that neither of us really comprehended. While it is a good thing to read ahead, neither of us has learned all the course books by heart and I think Ron will agree with me that your assertion came across as condescending and even very rude. Only once you had finished your little lecture did you decide to introduce yourself and ask who we are; and even then you did not allow your friend the chance to introduce himself.

"So, I don't think we are obligated to introduce ourselves to you at all and I must request that you leave this compartment and think about your behavior."

Hermione opened and closed her mouth several times before turning with a 'hmph' and leaving. Ron looked at Harry with gratitude.

"Thanks, mate, she really was rather…"

"Yeah," Harry agreed. "I mean, being interested in learning is one thing, but shoving information down the throats of people she just met and didn't even bother to greet properly is just plain rude."

* * *

**Hey, I love Hermione and everything, but you have to admit she was really kind of rude for a girl who loves rules and order. No social skills, I guess.**

* * *

He had just raised his wand when the compartment door slid open again. The toadless boy was back, but this time he had a girl with him. She was already wearing her new Hogwarts robes.

"Has anyone seen a toad? Neville's lost one," she said. She had a bossy sort of voice, lots of bushy brown hair, and rather large front teeth.

"We've already told him we haven't seen it," said Ron, but the girl wasn't listening, she was looking at the wand in his hand.

"Oh, are you doing magic? Let's see it, then."

She sat down. Ron looked taken aback.

"Er - all right."

He cleared his throat.

"Sunshine, daisies, butter mellow,

Turn this stupid, fat rat yellow."

He waved his wand, but nothing happened. Scabbers stayed gray and fast asleep.

"Are you sure that's a real spell?" said the girl. "Well, it's not very good, is it? I've tried a few simple spells just for practice and it's all worked for me. Nobody in my family's magic at all, it was ever such a surprise when I got my letter, but I was ever so pleased, of course, I mean, it's the very best school of witchcraft there is, I've heard - I've learned all our course books by heart, of course, I just hope it will be enough - I'm Hermione Granger, by the way, who are you?"

She said all this very fast.

Harry looked at Ron, and was relieved to see by his stunned face that he hadn't learned all the course books by heart either.

"I'm Ron Weasley," Ron muttered.

"Harry Potter," said Harry.

"Are you really?" said Hermione. "I know all about you, of course - I got a few extra books, for background reading, and you're in Modern Magical History and The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts and Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century."

"And you think that gives you the right to say you know all about me?" Harry said incredulously. "Just because a couple of people made guesses about what happened the night my parents were viciously murdered you think that should all be taken as the Gospel Truth?"

"Well, they wouldn't put it in a book if it wasn't true," Hermione protested.

"Seriously? No, really, you're serious? So, by your reasoning, if someone wrote a book that said human beings are descended from space aliens based purely on speculation and their own interpretations of strange ancient art, then humans must be descended from space aliens, is that what you're saying?"

"That's not what I said."

"Really? Because you said that you know _all_ about me just because you read some stuff in a couple of books. Need I point out that there were only four people there that night; my parents (both of whom are dead), Voldemort"-Cue shudders-"(who is possibly dead, though there is no real evidence), and me. I was only a year old at the time and don't remember anything about it. As such, no one else can claim they know for certain what happened that night and anyone who does is a liar. Not once have I even been asked for permission to mention my name in those books or even to give my opinion on what might have happened, even though I'm the only verifiably surviving witness.

"Your assertion to know anything at all about me beyond my name and that I was there the night Voldemort disappeared is completely groundless, especially as you haven't asked me a single thing about myself besides my name. Frankly, I find your presumption to be incredibly rude."

Everyone just stared at Harry.

* * *

"I'm Ron Weasley," Ron muttered.

"Harry Potter," said Harry.

"Are you really?" said Hermione. "I know all about you, of course - I got a few extra books, for background reading, and you're in Modern Magical History and The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts and Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century."

"Am I?" said Harry, feeling dazed.

"Goodness, didn't you know, I'd have found out everything I could if it was me," said Hermione. "Do either of you know what house you'll be in? I've been asking around, and I hope I'm in Gryffindor, it sounds by far the best; I hear Dumbledore himself was in it, but I suppose Ravenclaw wouldn't be too bad..."

"So, wait, you're just going to base your hopes for which House to go into entirely upon one person just because he's the Headmaster and has done a few great things?" said Harry.

"Well – I mean…he's Albus Dumbledore!"

"Yeah, and? If you're as well read as you claim, have you read anything about other great wizards and witches and what Houses they came out of? Just because one big name came out of Gryffindor doesn't automatically make it the best of the bunch. I made a few inquiries myself about the Houses and you sound like more of a Ravenclaw. Ravenclaws are supposed to be all about intelligence and learning whereas Gryffindors seem to be more of the loud, sporty kind of people who go charging into danger without thinking. Of course, if smart people end up in Gryffindor even though Ravenclaw is the House of the intelligent, do you know what that means?"

"What?" everyone said.

"We can choose what House we go into. I, personally, don't care which House I end up in as long as it isn't filled with berks. However, I am not going to make my decision based solely upon who our Headmaster is; I find that stupid, and not the funny kind of stupid either."

Everyone just stared at Harry.

* * *

"Whatever house I'm in, I hope she's not in it," said Ron. He threw his wand back into his trunk. "Stupid spell - George gave it to me, bet he knew it was a dud."

"What house are your brothers in?" asked Harry.

"Gryffindor," said Ron. Gloom seemed to be settling on him again. "Mum and Dad were in it, too. I don't know what they'll say if I'm not. I don't suppose Ravenclaw would be too bad, but imagine if they put me in Slytherin."

"Why should whatever House you're in make a difference?" said Harry. "I mean, we're all Hogwarts students, after all, and I doubt it would matter to your parents what House you're in."

"But…what if I end up in Slytherin?"

"I don't see why that should matter to them. If your parents truly care about you then they would be supportive no matter what you do in life. If you go into Slytherin then they should be happy that their son ended up in the House of the cunning and ambitious. Yeah, maybe some Slytherins act like berks, but there are always exceptions. Frankly, I think dividing students into groups is a bad idea."

"Why do you say that?"

"Well, think about it. You'll be separated from other students, hindering you from making more friends, and you'll basically be indoctrinated into disparaging the students in other Houses. I mean, if you're constantly being told that your House is the best, will you want to make friends with students in other Houses? It would make far more sense for students to be separated by year group and be assigned dorm rooms either alphabetically or at random so you get to mix with different kinds of people your own age. Plus, another upside of that is that older students who need to focus on exams and such are able to get their own space where they aren't being bothered by younger students who aren't at their level of academic responsibility.

"What do you think, Ron? Ron?"

Ron was just staring at Harry, his mouth hanging open, looking like he was frozen.

* * *

"Whatever house I'm in, I hope she's not in it," said Ron. He threw his wand back into his trunk. "Stupid spell - George gave it to me, bet he knew it was a dud."

"What house are your brothers in?" asked Harry.

"Gryffindor," said Ron. Gloom seemed to be settling on him again. "Mum and Dad were in it, too. I don't know what they'll say if I'm not. I don't suppose Ravenclaw would be too bad, but imagine if they put me in Slytherin."

"That's the house Vol-, I mean, You-Know-Who was in?"

"Yeah," said Ron. He flopped back into his seat, looking depressed.

"You know, I think the ends of Scabbers' whiskers are a bit lighter," said Harry, trying to take Ron's mind off houses. "So what do your oldest brothers do now that they've left, anyway?"

Harry was wondering what a wizard did once he'd finished school.

"Charlie's in Romania studying dragons, and Bill's in Africa doing something for Gringotts," said Ron. "Did you hear about Gringotts? It's been all over the Daily Prophet, but I don't suppose you get that with the Muggles - someone tried to rob a high security vault."

Harry stared.

"Really? What happened to them?"

"Nothing, that's why it's such big news. They haven't been caught. My dad says it must've been a powerful Dark wizard to get round Gringotts, but they don't think they took anything, that's what's odd. 'Course, everyone gets scared when something like this happens in case You-Know-Who's behind it."

"Wait a second," said Harry. "I thought pretty much everyone believes Vol-, You-Know-Who is dead?"

"Well…uh…"

"I mean, if they think he's still alive then are people investigating?"

"I don't…"

"And, if they think he's dead, why are they so afraid? I mean, if they're willing to jump to the conclusion that he's behind a mysterious break-in at Gringotts when there is no definitive evidence linking him to it, then they'll certainly believe it if, say, I suddenly appeared covered in blood and accompanied by the dead body of a fellow student and started screaming that You-Know-Who had returned."

Ron gave himself a shake to clear his head.

"Harry, mate, you think way too much about things."

* * *

Harry turned this news over in his mind. He was starting to get a prickle of fear every time You-Know-Who was mentioned. He supposed this was all part of entering the magical world, but it had been a lot more comfortable saying "Voldemort" without worrying.

"What's your Quidditch team?" Ron asked.

Harry gave Ron a firm glare.

"How many times do I have to say it? I. Grew up. In the Muggle world." He said the words slowly and with clear emphasis. "That means no Quidditch, no moving pictures, no dragons, and no magic. I have said this, what, fifty times? For you to keep forgetting is just…it's like you're not listening to a word I'm saying."

"Just you wait, Quidditch is the best sport in the world," Ron said enthusiastically.

Harry rested his face in his hand.

"I hate this world and everyone in it," he muttered.

* * *

Three boys entered, and Harry recognized the middle one at once: it was the pale boy from Madam Malkin's robe shop. He was looking at Harry with a lot more interest than he'd shown back in Diagon Alley.

"Is it true?" he said. "They're saying all down the train that Harry Potter's in this compartment. So it's you, is it?"

"Wait, how exactly did you know we were in here?" said Harry.

"Well, someone told us, obviously," the boy sneered.

"Yeah, yeah, I get that, but who exactly told you? I mean, only four people knew: Ron's brothers, a boy who was looking for his toad, and a girl named Hermione who was helping him. What, have they all just been running around telling everyone they come across that 'Harry Potter' is in this specific compartment regardless of the fact that I could've moved compartments at any time and the fact that it wasn't their business?"

"Yep."

Harry slapped a hand to his forehead. Was the wizarding world full of nothing but blabber-mouthed jerks?

* * *

Three boys entered, and Harry recognized the middle one at once: it was the pale boy from Madam Malkin's robe shop. He was looking at Harry with a lot more interest than he'd shown back in Diagon Alley.

"Is it true?" he said. "They're saying all down the train that Harry Potter's in this compartment. So it's you, is it?"

"Yes," said Harry. He was looking at the other boys. Both of them were thickset and looked extremely mean. Standing on either side of the pale boy, they looked like bodyguards.

"Oh, this is Crabbe and this is Goyle," said the pale boy carelessly, noticing where Harry was looking. "And my name's Malfoy, Draco Malfoy."

Ron gave a slight cough, which might have been hiding a snigger. Draco Malfoy looked at him.

"Think my name's funny, do you? No need to ask who you are. My father told me all the Weasleys have red hair, freckles, and more children than they can afford."

He turned back to Harry. "You'll soon find out some wizarding families are much better than others, Potter. You don't want to go making friends with the wrong sort. I can help you there."

He held out his hand to shake Harry's, but Harry didn't take it.

"I think I can tell who the wrong sort are for myself, thanks," he said coolly.

Draco Malfoy didn't go red, but a pink tinge appeared in his pale cheeks.

"I'd be careful if I were you, Potter," he said slowly. "Unless you're a bit politer you'll go the same way as your parents. They didn't know what was good for them, either. You hang around with riffraff like the Weasleys and that Hagrid, and it'll rub off on you."

"Excuse me?" said Harry. "You're one to talk about politeness considering you and your little buddies just barged in here uninvited and started making demands. You have done nothing to warrant my interest in becoming friends with you. You have insulted and belittled the people I have met who have shown me nothing but kindness while you brag about yourself and act like a condescending jerk.

"So, I don't think you have any right to claim that I am the one being impolite. You also seem to have it in your head that you are better than the people I have associated with simply because you have more money than they do; newsflash, if you expect people to like you just because you have money, are they really your friends? Because, should anything happen to your money, all the little friends you have, essentially, bought will abandon you.

"So, how about we try it like this? We shake hands and agree not to try to ruin each other's lives because the last thing you want when you're going into a new place is an enemy. If, in the future, we have each shown ourselves to be able to cooperate, then we can be casual acquaintances; if not, then we leave each other alone. How does that work for you?"

"You'll pay for this, Potter," Malfoy retorted. "When my father hears about this…"

"Well, can't blame a guy for trying," said Harry. He then kicked Malfoy in a very sensitive area. Hard. And the pale boy slumped to the floor.

* * *

Perhaps they thought there were more rats lurking among the sweets, or perhaps they'd heard footsteps, because a second later, Hermione Granger had come in.

"What has been going on?" she said, looking at the sweets all over the floor and Ron picking up Scabbers by his tail.

"I think he's been knocked out," Ron said to Harry. He looked closer at Scabbers. "No - I don't believe it - he's gone back to sleep."

And so he had.

"You've met Malfoy before?"

Harry explained about their meeting in Diagon Alley.

"I've heard of his family," said Ron darkly. "They were some of the first to come back to our side after You-Know-Who disappeared. Said they'd been bewitched. My dad doesn't believe it. He says Malfoy's father didn't need an excuse to go over to the Dark Side." He turned to Hermione. "Can we help you with something?"

"You'd better hurry up and put your robes on, I've just been up to the front to ask the conductor, and he says we're nearly there. You haven't been fighting, have you? You'll be in trouble before we even get there!"

"Excuse me," said Harry, "But I don't believe we appointed you our supervisor. You have already intruded upon our private conversation once before, what right do you have to come in here and tell us off? Especially as it was the other boys who started it and neither of us raised a hand to them."

"Well, I didn't know," Hermione insisted.

"No, you just walked in here, made assumptions, and started ordering us to get our robes on. While I appreciate the concern you showed by informing us we should get ready, I would've thought there would be an announcement or something made. That, however, does not excuse your behavior. We've had too much of people just barging in here as they please and bothering us. So, could you do us a favor and show yourself out?"

"All right - I only came in here because people outside are behaving very childishly, racing up and down the corridors," said Hermione in a sniffy voice. "And you've got dirt on your nose, by the way, did you know?" she added to Ron before leaving the compartment.

"Perhaps I've been a little harsh on her," said Harry thoughtfully. "On the other hand, someone needed to tell her that she can't tell us what to do all the time. Hopefully, the little lesson will be good for her and she'll reconsider bossing people around in future." _I really, really hope._

* * *

Ron glared at her as she left. Harry peered out of the window. It was getting dark. He could see mountains and forests under a deep purple sky. The train did seem to be slowing down.

He and Ron took off their jackets and pulled on their long black robes. Ron's were a bit short for him, you could see his sneakers underneath them.

Of course, how a wizard had sneakers was a wonder for Harry, who thought that sneakers seemed far too modern a thing for the magical community, all of whose members still wore cloaks for goodness sake. Harry puzzled on that for a moment before writing it off as irrelevant.

* * *

**That's something that puzzled me. The magical world was supposed to be stuck several centuries in the past, so why was Ron wearing sneakers? I would've thought wizards would all wear boots or something. That's also what bothered me so much about the movies; everyone is in modern clothes even though it was long-since established that witches and wizards wear robes, period, end of story, goodnight. Maybe the reason why Ron has sneakers is because his family is so poor that they even go to Muggle thrift shops?**


	8. The Sorting Hat

What Should Have Happened in Harry Potter

**To quote my all-time favorite fanfiction author, Rorschach's Blot, "Riddle me this, riddle me that, I'm afraid of the Sorting Hat. After all, it can read your thoughts and ruin your future."**

**Oh, and one little thing, I've gotten kind of tired of all the people telling me that a flying motorcycle can't go faster than a plane; I was being facetious and it is completely beside the point of what I was writing in the first chapter, so please stop bringing it up.**

**Also, I don't have a beta. I am writing and posting this simply straight from my own editing. That is why I hope my readers will be kind enough to point of things in the book that I might otherwise miss. Thank you.**

**And now for The Sorting Hat; or, as this chapter should be named, The Department of Redundancy Department.**

**I don't own Harry Potter.**

The Sorting Hat

The door swung open at once. A tall, black-haired witch in emerald-green robes stood there. She had a very stern face and Harry's first thought was that this was not someone to cross.

"The firs' years, Professor McGonagall," said Hagrid.

"Thank you, Hagrid. I will take them from here."

She pulled the door wide. The entrance hall was so big you could have fit the whole of the Dursleys' house in it. The stone walls were lit with flaming torches like the ones at Gringotts, the ceiling was too high to make out, and a magnificent marble staircase facing them led to the upper floors.

They followed Professor McGonagall across the flagged stone floor. Harry could hear the drone of hundreds of voices from a doorway to the right - the rest of the school must already be here - but Professor McGonagall showed the first years into a small, empty chamber off the hall. They crowded in, standing rather closer together than they would usually have done, peering about nervously.

"Welcome to Hogwarts," said Professor McGonagall. "The start-of-term banquet will begin shortly, but before you take your seats in the Great Hall, you will be sorted into your houses. The Sorting is a very important ceremony because, while you are here, your house will be something like your family within Hogwarts.

"Of course, I use the term 'family' very loosely considering the fact that the house system has done nothing except foster rivalries between each group and led to discrimination. And there's the fact that there is the house point system which can lead to your 'family' hating you if you lose too many points, even if those points were deducted unfairly. Then there is also the fact that _certain_ members of the faculty will be biased against you simply because you are not in his-or her…former house.

"You will have classes with the rest of your house, sleep in your house dormitory, and spend free time in your house common room. Even though this causes more rifts between the houses and inhibits you from socializing with members of the other houses, to say the least of the fact that there are so few opportunities or locations for students of different houses to meet. Essentially, you are going to be stuck in one group and only really expected to interact with other members of that group for the next seven years.

"Other than that, you all should be fine."

The group of first years stared up at her unblinkingly.

* * *

**Before anyone gets on my case about how students from other houses interact all the time, let me bring something up. Yes, while some classes seem to have at least two houses in it at one time, the students rarely interact with each other outside of group assignments (i.e. in Herbology or by unwilling chance in Potions). Yes, while there is inter-house dating (Percy Weasley and Penelope Clearwater, Cedric Diggory and Cho Chang, Harry Potter and Cho Chang, Ginny Weasley and Michael Corner), there seems to be very little in the way of friendships or socializing between the different houses. There are only one or two extracurricular activities (i.e. Quidditch and Gobstones, that's really it) and the only one we see where students from the different houses come together in the book is the DA, which was started by Harry in fifth year.**

* * *

"I shall return when we are ready for you," said Professor McGonagall. "Please wait quietly."

She left the chamber. Harry swallowed.

"How exactly do they sort us into houses?" he asked Ron.

"Some sort of test, I think. Fred said it hurts a lot, but I think he was joking."

Much to everyone's surprise, Harry burst out laughing.

"A test? Really? That would be completely ridiculous," he said. "I mean, we're all here to _learn_ magic, right? Why on earth would they test us when they don't expect us to know any magic in the first place?"

"Well, maybe they expect us to have read ahead in our books?" Hermione Granger suggested, preparing herself to go into a lecture about all the spells she had learned and which ones she might need.

"That makes no sense at all," Harry replied. "Yes, while we should have made sure to read the materials we'll need for our first class, I doubt very much that it will be anything strenuous. We're eleven, for goodness sake. What, did you think we'd have to do some sort of big show of magic in front of a panel of judges who'll decide our fate? The worst thing that could happen is we have to draw names out of a hat."

Everyone seemed to calm down dramatically at Harry's incredibly obvious and thoroughly reasonable explanation.

* * *

Then something happened that made him jump about a foot in the air - several people behind him screamed.

"What the - ?"

He gasped. So did the people around him. About twenty ghosts had just streamed through the back wall. Pearly-white and slightly transparent, they glided across the room talking to one another and hardly glancing at the first years. They seemed to be arguing. What looked like a fat little monk was saying: "Forgive and forget, I say, we ought to give him a second chance-"

"My dear Friar, haven't we given Peeves all the chances he deserves? He gives us all a bad name and you know, he's not really even a ghost - I say, what are you all doing here?"

A ghost wearing a ruff and tights had suddenly noticed the first years.

Nobody answered.

"New students!" said the Fat Friar, smiling around at them. "About to be Sorted, I suppose?"

"Well, yeah, what else would we be doing here?" said a girl, let's say it's Sally-Anne Perks, at the back of the group. Everyone turned to look at her. "Well, it is kind of obvious, isn't it? I mean, you two are ghosts, so you've probably been here a while and know that it's the first day of the new term. Then there's the fact that you realized we're new students and all clearly around the age of eleven and not wearing any sort of symbol of house affiliation. Therefore, it made no sense for you to wonder why we were here and it was completely redundant to ask if we are about to be Sorted."

The two ghosts stared at the girl then turned away to whisper to each other.

"She's too smart, Friar," said the ghost in the ruff. "She'll be a risk to our schemes of terrifying first years and making redundant remarks."

"Agreed, Sir Nicholas," said the Friar. "We have no choice but to make her completely disappear without a trace or an explanation at any point."

* * *

**That last part is sort of a bit of trivia. Sally-Anne Perks is one of five students who was never officially given a house and was never mentioned by Rowling at any point after the Sorting; the other four are Lily Moon, Emma Vane, Roger Malone, and a girl with the last name Runcorn.**

* * *

Harry had never even imagined such a strange and splendid place. It was lit by thousands and thousands of candles that were floating in midair over four long tables, where the rest of the students were sitting. These tables were laid with glittering golden plates and goblets. At the top of the hall was another long table where the teachers were sitting. Professor McGonagall led the first years up here, so that they came to a halt in a line facing the other students, with the teachers behind them. The hundreds of faces staring at them looked like pale lanterns in the flickering candlelight. Dotted here and there among the students, the ghosts shone misty silver. Mainly to avoid all the staring eyes, Harry looked upward and saw a velvety black ceiling dotted with stars. He heard Hermione whisper, "It's bewitched to look like the sky outside. I read about it in Hogwarts, A History."

Harry rolled his eyes in exasperation and turned around to face her.

"Do you mind," he whispered, earning a glare from her.

Honestly, it was bad enough being nervous about the Sorting without having someone shoving information down your throat. In fact, the information was kind of pointless as it was obvious that the ceiling would be bewitched as it would be stupid to not have a ceiling over a huge hall where lots of people were gathered in case of rain or other inclement weather. Hermione was clearly just trying to reassert that she read a lot.

* * *

**Sorry for picking on Hermione again, but the girl was horrendously annoying in her younger years (and just wait until I get to sixth; muahahaha!). If I were any of those students and heard Hermione spout off completely pointless information like that while I was marveling at the magic and worrying about the Sorting, I would be pretty pissed off at her and would likely have snapped.**

* * *

Harry quickly looked down again as Professor McGonagall silently placed a four-legged stool in front of the first years. On top of the stool she put a pointed wizard's hat. This hat was patched and frayed and extremely dirty. Aunt Petunia wouldn't have let it in the house.

Maybe they had to try and get a rabbit out of it, Harry thought wildly, that seemed the sort of thing - noticing that everyone in the hall was now staring at the hat, he stared at it, too. For a few seconds, there was complete silence. Then the hat twitched. A rip near the brim opened wide like a mouth - and the hat began to sing:

"_Oh, you may not think I'm pretty,_

_But don't judge on what you see,_

_I'll eat myself if you can find_

_A smarter hat than me._

_You can keep your bowlers black,_

_Your top hats sleek and tall,_

_For I'm the Hogwarts Sorting Hat_

_And I can cap them all._

_There's nothing hidden in your head_

_The Sorting Hat can't see,_

_So try me on and I will tell you_

_Where you ought to be._

_You might belong in Gryffindor,_

_Where dwell the brave at heart,_

_Their daring, nerve, and chivalry_

_Set Gryffindors apart;_

_You might belong in Hufflepuff,_

_Where they are just and loyal,_

_Those patient Hufflepuffs are true_

_And unafraid of toil;_

_Or yet in wise old Ravenclaw, if you've a ready mind,_

_Where those of wit and learning,_

_Will always find their kind;_

_Or perhaps in Slytherin_

_You'll make your real friends,_

_Those cunning folk use any means_

_To achieve their ends._

_So put me on! Don't be afraid!_

_And don't get in a flap!_

_You're in safe hands (though I have none)_

_For I'm a Thinking Cap!_"

The whole hall burst into applause as the hat finished its song. It bowed to each of the four tables and then became quite still again.

Harry, on the other hand, felt very uncomfortable with the idea of a talking hat that had the task of looking into your head. It even said "There's nothing hidden in your head the Sorting Hat can't see"; that, in and of itself, should have been cause for alarm. Not only was this a tremendous violation of privacy, there was also the question of whether or not the hat could reveal your deepest, darkest secrets to people. Sure, everyone was taken in by the cheerful little ditty but they missed the underlying implications of having a strange and unknown sentient object reading their minds and possibly even revealing what it found to someone else.

Harry repressed the urge to shudder.

* * *

"So we've just got to try on the hat!" Ron whispered to Harry. "I'll kill Fred; he was going on about wrestling a troll."

"And you believed him?" Harry said quietly. "This is the same Fred who gave you a bogus spell, right?"

"Um, well…"

"Seriously, do you believe everything he says regardless of whether or not he's misled you in the past?"

Ron's ears started to turn red and he didn't answer.

* * *

Harry smiled weakly. Yes, trying on the hat was a lot better than having to do a spell, but he did wish they could have tried it on without everyone watching. The hat seemed to be asking rather a lot; Harry didn't feel brave or quick-witted or any of it at the moment. If only the hat had mentioned a house for people who felt a bit queasy, that would have been the one for him.

In fact, it was incredibly stupid to have this done in such a public setting. Harry could only imagine what it would be like to sit there on that stool in front of several hundred strangers with their eyes boring into him in anticipation of where he would be Sorted. It would have made far more sense to have the Sorting done in private and have the students escorted to their tables, saving a lot of people from anxiety and also removing the possibility of traumatizing a bunch of terrified eleven-year-olds especially if said eleven-year-olds (like Harry, for instance) didn't take well to being stared at by large groups of people.

* * *

Professor McGonagall now stepped forward holding a long roll of parchment.

"When I call your name, you will put on the hat and sit on the stool to be Sorted," she said. "Abbott, Hannah!"

A pink-faced girl with blonde pigtails stumbled out of line, put on the hat, which fell right down over her eyes, and sat down. A moment's pause -

"HUFFLEPUFF!" shouted the hat.

The table on the right cheered and clapped as Hannah went to sit down at the Hufflepuff table. Harry saw the ghost of the Fat Friar waving merrily at her.

"Bones, Susan!"

"HUFFLEPUFF!" shouted the hat again, and Susan scuttled off to sit next to Hannah.

"Boot, Terry!"

"RAVENCLAW!"

The table second from the left clapped this time; several Ravenclaws stood up to shake hands with Terry as he joined them.

"Brocklehurst, Mandy" went to Ravenclaw too, but "Brown, Lavender" became the first new Gryffindor, and the table on the far left exploded with cheers; Harry could see Ron's twin brothers catcalling.

"Bulstrode, Millicent" then became a Slytherin. Perhaps it was Harry's imagination, after all he'd heard about Slytherin, but he thought they looked like an unpleasant lot.

However, he then reminded himself that they were still students like him and, despite his bad first impressions with Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle, Harry had to face the fact that he couldn't judge an entire house based solely upon three unpleasant individuals. In fact, if Harry had to venture a guess, the only reason why the Slytherins seemed like bad guys was because people treated them like bad guys, possibly without any real justification.

Harry figured it would probably be better not to judge them based on appearances. After all, back in Little Whinging, people had always disliked him without reason, just because the Dursleys said he was bad and because he dressed in rags and because Dudley bullied him; therefore, it would be completely hypocritical and shallow of him to treat other people that way.

* * *

A horrible thought struck Harry, as horrible thoughts always do when you're very nervous. What if he wasn't chosen at all? What if he just sat there with the hat over his eyes for ages, until Professor McGonagall jerked it off his head and said there had obviously been a mistake and he'd better get back on the train?

Of course, Harry instantly realized how stupid that notion was. He'd received a letter inviting him to the school, Hagrid had made him realize all the magic he'd done over the years, and a wand had acknowledged him as its owner; if that wasn't sufficient evidence that there hadn't been a mistake, Harry would turn around and leave of his own accord. If a school that prided itself on being a first-rate educational facility for young witches and wizards was capable of making a mistake that big, then Harry seriously had to question the validity of its claim.

* * *

When Neville Longbottom, the boy who kept losing his toad, was called, he fell over on his way to the stool. The hat took a long time to decide with Neville. When it finally shouted, "GRYFFINDOR," Neville ran off still wearing it, and had to jog back amid gales of laughter to give it to "MacDougal, Morag."

Malfoy swaggered forward when his name was called and got his wish at once: the hat had barely touched his head when it screamed, "SLYTHERIN!"

Malfoy went to join his friends Crabbe and Goyle, looking pleased with himself.

The fact that Malfoy and his goons ended up in Slytherin gave Harry a moment of pause. Slytherin was supposed to be a house of cunning and guile; however, those three could not be categorized as either of those things. Malfoy was clearly a whiny little turd who relied on his two troglodyte bodyguards to force his opinions on others; in fact, Harry was fairly sure that Malfoy wasn't voicing his own opinions and merely parroted everything his parents told him. It would explain why Malfoy felt he could get away with threatening Harry on the train simply because of who he was. Slytherin must clearly have the lowest standards of entry of any house if it accepted those three when its requirements clearly stated that it was a house of the clever, the ambitious, and those who were ruthlessly cunning. Malfoy had as much subtlety as a sign reading "Death to Parliament" carried by a bunch of guys wearing Guy Fawkes masks at a rally against the government; it was pretty obvious what was going on after a few moments of observation.

* * *

There weren't many people left now. "Moon"..., "Nott"..., "Parkinson"..., then a pair of twin girls, "Patil" and "Patil"..., then "Perks, Sally-Anne"..., and then, at last -

"Potter, Harry!"

As Harry stepped forward, whispers suddenly broke out like little hissing fires all over the hall.

"Potter, did she say?"

"The Harry Potter?"

The last thing Harry saw before the hat dropped over his eyes was the hall full of people craning to get a good look at him. Next second he was looking at the black inside of the hat. He waited.

"Hmm," said a small voice in his ear. "Difficult. Very difficult. Plenty of courage, I see. Not a bad mind either. There's talent, A my goodness, yes - and a nice thirst to prove yourself, now that's interesting... So where shall I put you?"

Considering the fact that Harry had not received any real counseling on where he should end up, just a few hints that he should be in Gryffindor, Harry decided now was his last opportunity.

"I'm not sure, what would you recommend?" he thought.

"Well, I can see that you would do well in Slytherin," the hat replied.

"I beg your pardon, but that's rather insulting considering you put dimwits like Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle in with that lot. To say the least of the fact that putting me in there could result in potential danger for me as I do believe a number of children of Voldemort's followers may have ended up there."

"Oh…well, you're quite right about that. Sorry, don't know what I was thinking trying to put you into the 'viper's nest' as it were. I only meant that you have qualities that are suited to the ideal of Slytherin house. In fact, you're probably one of the few who does. I mean just look at what I was forced to put in Salazar Slytherin's house over the years. Psychopaths, murderers, men who can't get over a grudge against dead people…"

"Um, is this going to take much longer?"

"What? Oh, sorry about that. Now, let's see where you should go…Not Slytherin, eh? Well, if you're sure - better be GRYFFINDOR!"

* * *

Albus Dumbledore had gotten to his feet. He was beaming at the students, his arms opened wide, as if nothing could have pleased him more than to see them all there.

"Welcome," he said. "Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!

"Thank you!"

He sat back down. Everybody clapped and cheered. Harry didn't know whether to laugh or not.

"Is he - a bit mad?" he asked Percy uncertainly.

"Mad?" said Percy airily. "He's a genius! Best wizard in the world! But he is a bit mad, yes. Potatoes, Harry?"

Harry stared back at Percy.

"So, let me get this straight, we're in a school run by a man who is clearly not entirely in his right frame of mind and everyone is okay with this?" said Harry incredulously.

"Well, yes."

"No, no, I'm being serious here," Harry insisted. "The man obviously is more than just a little eccentric and we are expected to put our safety into his hands? That's just…shouldn't someone of his age with his clear level of senility have retired by now? Forgive me if I'm wrong about this but are you sure he is competent at running a school?"

Percy simply shrugged.

"Well, there haven't been any deaths, as far as I can tell you," said Percy. "I'm sure no one will come to any harm as long as Dumbledore's running things."

For some reason this did not comfort Harry.

* * *

When everyone had eaten as much as they could, the remains of the food faded from the plates, leaving them sparkling clean as before. A moment later the desserts appeared. Blocks of ice cream in every flavor you could think of, apple pies, treacle tarts, chocolate eclairs and jam doughnuts, trifle, strawberries, Jell-O, rice pudding...

As Harry helped himself to a treacle tart, the talk turned to their families.

"I'm half-and-half," said Seamus. "Me dad's a Muggle. Mom didn't tell him she was a witch 'til after they were married. Bit of a nasty shock for him."

The others laughed. Well, except for Harry who simply stared at him in disbelief.

"That's not funny," said Harry. "What if your father hadn't accepted her when she told him? What if he had treated her and you like monsters just for having an ability he didn't? Frankly, I think making light of a situation like that is awful, especially when you think about how many witches and wizards and their children weren't accepted by non-magical relatives. I mean, look at how my relatives treated me just because my parents were magical and they knew I was a wizard?"

"What, you mean they don't like you?" asked Seamus.

"Are you kidding? They _hate_ me. All because I have a power they don't. So, I would appreciate it if you didn't joke about Muggle relatives being shocked about magic."

"Um, what about you, Neville?" said Ron, trying to diffuse the tension.

"Well, my gran brought me up and she's a witch," said Neville, "but the family thought I was all-Muggle for ages. My Great Uncle Algie kept trying to catch me off my guard and force some magic out of me - he pushed me off the end of Blackpool pier once, I nearly drowned - but nothing happened until I was eight. Great Uncle Algie came round for dinner, and he was hanging me out of an upstairs window by the ankles when my Great Auntie Enid offered him a meringue and he accidentally let go. But I bounced - all the way down the garden and into the road. They were all really pleased, Gran was crying, she was so happy. And you should have seen their faces when I got in here - they thought I might not be magic enough to come, you see. Great Uncle Algie was so pleased he bought me my toad."

"That's just as horrible," said Harry. "You mean to tell me that you were routinely put in danger by members of your family to _force_ magic out of you? That's barbaric and abusive. What if you hadn't been magical? Your uncle dropped you out of the window and you would have _died_.

"But, of course, that's all well and good because you finally did perform magic," Harry said sarcastically. "So of course it was all right to treat you like that because your safety wouldn't have mattered if you were non-magical." Harry's expression became serious. "Then, your uncle tries to make it up to you by buying you a toad? Eight years of being potentially injured or even killed and made to feel inadequate, and that's the best he can do to compensate you?

"There is something seriously wrong with the magical world if child abuse is acceptable behavior."

Everyone magically-raised looked incredibly dazed while those of non-magical background nodded in approval.

* * *

Harry, who was starting to feel warm and sleepy, looked up at the High Table again. Hagrid was drinking deeply from his goblet. Professor McGonagall was talking to Professor Dumbledore. Professor Quirrell, in his absurd turban, was talking to a teacher with greasy black hair, a hooked nose, and sallow skin.

It happened very suddenly. The hook-nosed teacher looked past Quirrell's turban straight into Harry's eyes - and a sharp, hot pain shot across the scar on Harry's forehead.

"Ouch!" Harry clapped a hand to his head.

"What is it?" asked Percy.

"N-nothing."

The pain had gone as quickly as it had come. Harder to shake off was the feeling Harry had gotten from the teacher's look - a feeling that he didn't like Harry at all.

"Who's that teacher talking to Professor Quirrell?" he asked Percy.

"Oh, you know Quirrell already, do you? No wonder he's looking so nervous, that's Professor Snape. He teaches Potions, but he doesn't want to - everyone knows he's after Quirrell's job. Knows an awful lot about the Dark Arts, Snape."

"So, what exactly is he like as a teacher?" said Harry.

"Well, he doesn't like Gryffindors and he always favors the Slytherins. He's also definitely not the sort of teacher one would go to for help, unless you were in Slytherin, obviously."

"And he's allowed to get away with that kind of behavior? Aren't there rules to stop teachers from exhibiting bias against students not in their House?"

"Actually, I don't think there are. If there were then I am sure either Dumbledore or McGonagall would have reined him in ages ago."

Harry wondered why on earth anybody would let a man who was incapable of acting with a professional attitude teach a school full of children.

* * *

At last, the desserts too disappeared, and Professor Dumbledore got to his feet again. The hall fell silent.

"Ahem - just a few more words now that we are all fed and watered. I have a few start-of-term notices to give you.

"First years should note that the forest on the grounds is forbidden to all pupils. And a few of our older students would do well to remember that as well."

Dumbledore's twinkling eyes flashed in the direction of the Weasley twins.

"I have also been asked by Mr. Filch, the caretaker, to remind you all that no magic should be used between classes in the corridors.

"Quidditch trials will be held in the second week of the term. Anyone interested in playing for their house teams should contact Madam Hooch.

"And finally, I must tell you that this year, the third-floor corridor on the right-hand side is out of bounds to everyone who does not wish to die a very painful death."

Harry laughed, but he was one of the few who did.

"He's not serious?" he muttered to Percy.

"Must be," said Percy, frowning at Dumbledore. "It's odd, because he usually gives us a reason why we're not allowed to go somewhere - the forest's full of dangerous beasts, everyone knows that. I do think he might have told us prefects, at least."

"Wait, seriously, he's just going to announce to everyone that we should stay away from a particular place? Just how stupid is he? Telling a bunch of children that a place is out-of-bounds, especially without giving a real explanation, is like walking up to a ravenous junkyard pit-bull while dressed up as a juicy steak. It's asking for nothing but trouble."

"I don't think anyone would go there after the headmaster gave us a warning," Percy said dismissively. "He's Albus Dumbledore after all."

"That's complete crap. A good number of the first years probably barely have an inkling of who Dumbledore is, let alone feel the need to follow his rules. And if you think no one is going to go investigate this 'forbidden corridor' then you're as deluded as he is."

Percy simply looked up at the headmaster, ignoring every word of Harry's protest.

* * *

At the very end of the corridor hung a portrait of a very fat woman in a pink silk dress.

"Password?" she said.

"Caput Draconis," said Percy, and the portrait swung forward to reveal a round hole in the wall. They all scrambled through it - Neville needed a leg up - and found themselves in the Gryffindor common room, a cozy, round room full of squashy armchairs.

Percy directed the girls through one door to their dormitory and the boys through another. At the top of a spiral staircase - they were obviously in one of the towers - they found their beds at last: five four-posters hung with deep red, velvet curtains. Their trunks had already been brought up. Too tired to talk much, they pulled on their pajamas and fell into bed.

"Great food, isn't it?" Ron muttered to Harry through the hangings. "Get off, Scabbers! He's chewing my sheets."

Harry was going to ask Ron if he'd had any of the treacle tart, but he fell asleep almost at once.

Perhaps Harry had eaten a bit too much, because he had a very strange dream. He was wearing Professor Quirrell's turban, which kept talking to him, telling him he must transfer to Slytherin at once, because it was his destiny. Harry told the turban he didn't want to be in Slytherin; it got heavier and heavier; he tried to pull it off but it tightened painfully - and there was Malfoy, laughing at him as he struggled with it - then Malfoy turned into the hook-nosed teacher, Snape, whose laugh became high and cold - there was a burst of green light and Harry woke, sweating and shaking.

This was followed by an immediate run to the bathroom where Harry's stomach, unused to holding so much food after consistent periods of being denied proper nourishment, regurgitated everything Harry had eaten over the last several hours.

Harry reflected, as he leaned over the toilet in agony, that perhaps eating as much as he had that day was not such a good idea. Every informed person knows that if one has not been receiving a normal intake of food, to suddenly change one's diet (in Harry's case, going from bare minimum to huge feast) can result in some nasty side-effects, not least of which includes vomiting. The sensible thing would have been for Harry to slowly get up to a normal level of food consumption rather than, essentially, binging after his Dursley-induced 'diet.'

Harry eventually returned to bed and fell asleep again, and when he woke next day, he didn't remember his dream at all.

* * *

**That last scene is accurate to reality. Sorry if it shocked you, but it's what would have really happened. Anyone can tell you that if you have not been eating enough over a long period of time then to suddenly consume large quantities of food, especially if it has high fat and sugar content, can cause your body to go into shock and result in you becoming very sick. I had a sort of reverse experience; the food at my college's cafeteria is usually very fattening and greasy, so when I tried a salad for the first time in ages I felt horrible all that evening and into the night. Harry (though he said he'd never been "exactly starved") has lived on a very restricted amount of food for about ten years with regular periods when the Dursleys did deny him food (even if he did manage to sneak out and steal something to eat); when he went from that lifestyle to suddenly eating half the candy trolley and then a sumptuous dinner, he would have been violently ill and would possibly have ended up in the hospital wing.**


End file.
